UCLA chemists have developed a new method to produce nanoribbons of graphene, next-generation structures that many scientists believe will one day power electronic devices.
This research is published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Tiny pores at a cell’s entryway act as miniature bouncers, letting in some electrically charged atoms—ions—but blocking others. Operating as exquisitely sensitive filters, these “ion channels” play a critical role in biological functions such as muscle contraction and the firing of brain cells. To rapidly transport the right ions through the cell membrane, the tiny channels rely on a complex interplay between the ions and surrounding molecules, particularly water, that have an affinity for the charged atoms. But these molecular processes have traditionally been difficult to model—and therefore to understand—using computers or artificial structures.
Silicon chips were the foundation of a famous global tech hub, and officials at the University of Adelaide think the “miracle material of the 21st century”, graphene, can help create another one. ‘Graphene Valley’ anyone?
Skeleton Technologies has announced the signing of a distribution agreement with Sumitomo Corporation Europe, with the aim of providing energy storage solutions for the rapidly growing hybrid electric and electric vehicle industry.
Great article from the archive – Physicists at UCLA set out to design a better transistor and ended up discovering a new way to think about the structure of space. Space is usually considered infinitely divisible — given any two positions, there is always a position halfway between.
Supercapacitors can store more energy than and are preferable to batteries because they are able to charge faster mainly due to the vertical graphene nanosheets (VGNs) that are larger and positioned closer together. VGNs are 3-D networks of carbon nanomaterial that grow in rows of vertical sheets, providing a large surface area for greater charge storage capacity. Also called carbon nanowalls or graphene nanoflakes, VGNs offer promise in high-power energy storage systems, fuel cells, bio sensors and magnetic devices, amongst others.
Wyoming-mined coal could be a cheap source for graphene — a material with implications for electronics, aerospace technologies and other industries — which has fascinated scientists for more than a decade. At least that’s the hope of some researchers at the University of Wyoming who are investigating methods for “growing” graphene and other useful carbon materials from coal.
Graphene ribbons that are only a few atoms wide, so-called graphene nanoribbons, have special electrical properties that make them promising candidates for the nanoelectronics of the future: While graphene – a one atom thin, honeycomb-shaped carbon layer – is a conductive material, it can become a semiconductor in the form of nanoribbons. This means that it has a sufficiently large energy or band gap in which no electron states can exist: it can be turned on and off – and thus may become a key component of nanotransistors.
Graphene’s unique combination of electrical and physical properties marks it out as a potential candidate for transparent, stretchable electronics, which could enable a new generation of sophisticated displays, wearable health monitors, or soft robotic devices. But, although graphene is atomically thin, highly transparent, conductive, and more stretchable than conventional indium tin oxide electrodes, it still tends to crack at small strains.
Using a pierced gold sheet coated in graphene, scientists have created thin lenses that can be used to manipulate the intensity and polarity of light. Scientists in South Korea and the United Kingdom have developed optical devices made of graphene and gold which can control the intensity and polarity of light. They published their findings in Advanced Optical Materials.