Entries by John Are Beukes

Improved Anticorrosion Graphene Coating

Metal corrosion is an important and often costly problem in many branches of industry. Standard anticorrosion coatings need to be relatively thick. Graphene, in contrast, could prevent oxygen and water from reaching a metal surface with only a negligible coating thickness. However, it is semi-metallic and could even accelerate electrochemical corrosion by forming a circuit […]

A New Graphene Production Method for Smaller Semiconductors

Revealing a new production process, scientists at UCLA have used light and heat to synthesize graphene nanoribbons. In their search for a material with great semiconductivity at ambient temperature, scientists have known for many years that carbon nanotubes have a large ballistic conductivity capability, that is to say with negligible electric resistivity.

Graphene among the five trends for advances that have the potential to change how we live our lives

The physical foundation for invention is materials.  New innovations in materials enable the development of new products never thought possible.  Graphene is the material that will make many 21st century tech, medical and industrial innovations possible.   Graphene is a newly discovered carbon-based material that has unique properties at the atomic level.  The physical science behind […]

Review of 2017: The year graphene became a teenager.

Graphene was first isolated in 2004 in Manchester, UK. As James Baker at the NGI noted, 2017 was the year it became a teenager. Read on to take a look at what this thirteen-year-old miracle material has done and what it might be capable of in future… Graphene is currently commercially made from graphite. This […]

How a research institute near Barcelona exploits graphene’s potential in light-based technologies to advance 5G efforts

One day this past September, I found myself on a shuttle bus heading 20 minutes outside the center of Barcelona to the Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, or ICFO (Institute of Photonic Sciences). After five years of covering the groundbreaking photonics research coming out of this relatively small research institute nestled in the northeast corner of Spain, […]

New crowdfunding campaign for graphene-based battery power bank

A new graphene-based fast charging USB-C battery pack has started its crowdfunding quest on Kickstarter. At the time of writing, the campaign already raised $48,860, much more than the pledged $10,000 goal. Describing itself as the world’s first portable USB-C power bank which works using graphene-based composite packs, it is smaller than many power packs […]

Super aluminum-graphene battery has a 5-second charging time

Material and engineering researchers at East China’s Zhejiang University unveiled a “super” aluminum-graphene battery that can be fully charged in 5 seconds and then last for two hours. They claim to have developed a novel aluminum-graphene battery that is more cold-resistant, can work in temperatures ranging from -40 C to 120 C and is less […]

The best of 2017 – top graphene stories

2017 is over – and it was a good year for the graphene industry. More and more graphene-enhanced products are launched on the market in many industries – including sports equipment, sensors, audio, energy and more. Production capacity is increasing, prices are going down and it seems that graphene is finally starting to fulfill its […]