Nerves and their connections are the wiring in our bodies that connect brain to muscles. When this goes wrong we can end up paralysed and permanently incapacitated. So when I heard that a team in South Korea found that graphene oxide could help nerves reconnect I thought you might like to know too…
Peter Steeneken (professor) and Farbod Alijani (assistant professor) from the Dynamics of Micro and Nanosystems Section at the Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering have developed a new method to determine the material properties of graphene with the aid of high-frequency non-linear dynamics. Their new method makes it possible to accurately measure the Young’s modulus (elastic modulus) of graphene and enables a potentially quicker measurement. This could make it easier to characterise a large number of membranes in a production process, for example. This week, Peter and Farbod published their article entitled ‘Nonlinear dynamic characterization of two-dimensional materials’ in Nature Communications.
Desalination of seawater remains one of the most challenging and expensive ways to produce drinking water. But as water scarcity forces communities in many parts of the world to find new sources of drinking water, our international research team based in The University of Manchester is committed to making a breakthrough in this critical field using our world-leading expertise in materials science.
The ability of graphene to add functionality to common objects has been exploited in a new product on the market: footwear with better thermal properties. Developed by Graphene Flagship partners Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy, in collaboration with FADEL, a leading Italian shoe company based in Tuscany, the new GET® technology, patented by FADEL, gives the footwear better thermoregulation and freshness.
The combination of graphene with quantum dots for use in optoelectronics stems in large part from the contributions of Gerasimos Konstantatos, a group leader at ICFO, who worked with Ted Sargent at the University of Toronto, whose research group has been at the forefront of exploiting colloidal quantum dots for use in a range of applications, most notably high-efficiency photovoltaics.
U.S-based Urbix Resources has unveiled new high-density, low leakage graphene-based supercapacitors. According to Urbix, these supercapacitors have energy density of >75 wH/L with volumetric discharge energy density that is five times larger than average, with the lowest leakage rate in market (<1μA/day over 30 days) and operational temperatures that go from -40° C to 70°C.
Transparent electronic and electro-optical (EO) devices have become an area of increasing interest in modern day technology research. Graphene’s excellent optical and electronic properties have made it an ideal material for research in such technologies and has become a material of considerable and continuous interest for transparent conductive electrodes in liquid crystal electro-optical devices.
Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of the stuff in pencils, is considered a better conductor than copper and is extremely promising for electronic devices however there is one catch: Electrons that pass through it cannot be stopped.
Although graphene’s unsurpassed strength as a material was made clear back in the 20th century, the construction industry still relies on traditional techniques and products for the most part.
Factories stand ready to launch wholesale production of graphene concrete and other building materials, but the market remains largely uninformed of their potential. If demand has yet to take off, perhaps it is because graphene still poses as many questions as answers. Researchers at NanoGraphene, Inc. finding themselves in the eye of Hurricane Irma, considered the question of how such enormous destruction could have been avoided.
Recent advances in single-molecule thermoelectricity has isolated and identified different families of high-performance molecules. However, to realize the commercial potential of these molecules and convert them into real-world thin-film energy-harvesting devices, fundamental issues surrounding parallel-aligned junctions within these devices need to be addressed.