The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA uses the tagline: “We manufacture the future”.
Certainly as one of the leading research institutes in the world for the development of automotive technology, Fraunhofer has a global reputation for delivering the latest cutting edge breakthroughs in any technology associated with the automotive industry from energy storage to lightweight engineering.
You probably won’t find many nanotechnologists at New York Fashion Week, but that may soon change thanks to the work of Felice Torrisi, a researcher at the Cambridge Graphene Center who is pioneering the future of wearable tech.
In this paper, the authors report the use of a simple and inexpensive electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique to develop thin, uniform, and transparent graphene oxide (GO) coating on copper (Cu) substrate on application of 10 V for 1 s from an aqueous suspension containing 0.03 wt % graphene oxide.
Imaging electrons can help scientists better understand exotic electronic states, such as electricity that travels through wires without loss. The team created images of superfast electrons trapped as they tunnel through energy barriers in graphene. They visualized this unusual tunneling for the first time (Nature Physics, “Imaging electrostatically confined Dirac fermions in graphene quantum dots”).
In November, Pan European Networks attended the 4th Graphene New Materials and 15th HVM Conference in Cambridge, UK, and there heard Professor Andrea Ferrari – director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and chair of the management panel for the €1bn Graphene Flagship project, discuss some of the challenges experienced when attempting to move graphene – and, indeed, any other material – from the laboratory to the marketplace.
A novel solid-phase microextraction fiber was prepared using graphene oxide/β-cyclodextrin (GO/β-CD) composite as a coating material immobilized on a stainless steel wire using sol–gel technique. The coating has large surface area with uniform porous structure, stable performance at high temperature, and good coating preparation reproducibility.
There are many other 2D materials than graphene that exhibit a hexagonal array and are uni-atomic. A team of researchers from Brazil and Germany have used theoretical ab-initio methods to investigate how other group IV 2D materials, the so-called X-enes, interact when deposited onto a graphene-silicon carbide substrate.
Researchers at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), in collaboration with teams from the University of Birmingham and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), have developed unique graphene-based lenses with tunable features. These optical devices, made of graphene and a punctured gold surface, could become optical components for advanced applications like amplitude tunable lenses, lasers (i.e. vortex phase plates), and dynamic holography.
On the quest for miniaturization, scientists at the Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), develop credit card-thick, flat lenses with tunable features. These optical devices, made of graphene and a punctured gold surface, could become optical components for advanced applications, such as amplitude tunable lenses, lasers (i.e. vortex phase plates), and dynamic holography.
The technology of the future is set to be lighter, more flexible and incredibly durable. But which wonder materials will get us there? From science fiction to comic books, there have been plenty of wonder materials that promise the impossible. One example is adamantium, which is supposedly indestructible.