The GRAPHENE mega thread - because it's technology you need to know about!

Specifically, [the researchers] demonstrated two things in this study. First, they were able to integrate rGO [reduced graphene oxide] onto sapphire and silicon wafers – across the entire wafer.

Second, the researchers used high-powered laser pulses to disrupt chemical groups at regular intervals across the wafer. This disruption moved electrons from one group to another, effectively converting p-type rGO [positive rGO] to n-type rGO [negative rGO]. The entire process is done at room temperature and pressure using high-power nanosecond laser pulses, and is completed in less than one-fifth of a microsecond. The laser radiation annealing provides a high degree of spatial and depth control for creating the n-type regions needed to create p-n junction-based two-dimensional electronic devices.

The end result is a wafer with a layer of n-type rGO on the surface and a layer of p-type rGO underneath.

This is critical, because the p-n junction, where the two types meet, is what makes the material useful for transistor applications.

Phys.org, March 30, 2017 - Advances make reduced graphene oxide electronics feasible.

Uh, not only feasible but proof of concept! C'mon phys.org, let's show some excitement! A sheet of graphene transistors! Tell me that is not cool and exciting news! Since graphene conducts electricity so well it will be low powered. Wiring the thing up might be tricky (i.e., expensive) but probably still worth it in the end.

Graphene transistors!! YAY! One YUGE step towards the future!

Another graphene oxide "break through"

Graphene-oxide membranes have attracted considerable attention as promising candidates for new filtration technologies. Now the much sought-after development of making membranes capable of sieving common salts has been achieved.
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Previous research at The University of Manchester found that if immersed in water, graphene-oxide membranes become slightly swollen and smaller salts flow through the membrane along with water, but larger ions or molecules are blocked.

The Manchester-based group have now further developed these graphene membranes and found a strategy to avoid the swelling of the membrane when exposed to water. The pore size in the membrane can be precisely controlled which can sieve common salts out of salty water and make it safe to drink.
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Mr. Jijo Abraham and Dr. Vasu Siddeswara Kalangi were the joint-lead authors on the research paper: "The developed membranes are not only useful for desalination, but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of filtering out ions according to their sizes." said Mr. Abraham.

Phys.org, April 3, 2017 - Graphene sieve turns seawater into drinking water.

- and -

BBC.com, news - Graphene-based sieve turns seawater into drinking water.

The much touted graphene membrane that could do the same has been difficult to construct since they need uniform pore size to only let water through and keep out salts. So they went to the little brother of graphene, graphene oxide (GO). The Beebs actually has a little more info as this announcement comes out of Univ. of Manchester; the researchers had problems with the pores increasing in size when water was added because GO swelled so they encased the filter in epoxy (glue) to keep expansion from happening. This kept out the smaller salt molecules. The Beebs also says they are going to do a test against "state-of-the-art" conventional membranes. Let's hope their results are "good as" because graphene oxide is easier to produce than a full sheet of graphene with nanometer pores equally distributed across the entire sheet.

Good news for water desalination across the world! Good job graphene oxide!!

ETA: Forgot the other part of the announcement! The "tunable pore size" which is a good way to sieve out "heavy water" as a fuel for nuclear fusion. That maybe necessary if somebody announces they can turn out fusion reactors off their jet engine assembly lines...

I SMELL A RAT!!

This special material is a film of a special structure of carbon, a honeycomb lattice called graphene.

"Graphene is pure carbon that is made in a hot oven on top of a copper sheet in a vacuum," John Stetson, the chief technologist at Lockheed for this initiative explained to Business Insider. "Methane gas is put into the vacuum and the methane changes into a single film of carbon atoms all linked together tightly like chickenwire (at the atomic level) 1,000 times stronger than steel and tolerant of temperature, pressure and pH."

The sheet is dotted with holes that are one nanometer or less. These holes between carbon atoms trap the salt and other impurities.

Business Insider, March 22, 2013 – Lockheed Martin Says This Desalination Technology Is An Industry Game-Changer.

- A nod to this here -

OP (EternalSolace)’s link in this thread: Earth's Fresh water scarcity may be solved.

This is total BS because here is an article saying Lockheed has a process on how to make a sheet of graphene from back in 2013!!! With detailed instructions. So it should be duplicable right??

That is bullsh#. They are keeping technology from us because they… ??? what… they can’t make money off of it!?? F# I’m pissed!

Oh look! The F-35 has coating issues! "We will need more money to fix that problem..."

BS! Lockheed figured how to make sheets of graphene at least 4 years ago...

Makes me wonder when the T4 compact fusion reactor "prototype" will be "announced" as big, black triangles fly around overhead with a double-negative refractive index coating so us stupid cows can't see their precious technology because we are too dumb to know how it works...

One...

Researchers in AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College Dublin, have fabricated printed transistors consisting entirely of 2-dimensional nanomaterials for the first time. These 2D materials combine exciting electronic properties with the potential for low-cost production. This breakthrough could unlock the potential for applications such as food packaging that displays a digital countdown to warn you of spoiling, wine labels that alert you when your white wine is at its optimum temperature, or even a window pane that shows the day's forecast. The AMBER team's findings have been published today in the leading journal Science.

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Led by Prof Coleman, in collaboration with the groups of Prof Georg Duesberg (AMBER) and Prof. Laurens Siebbeles (TU Delft, Netherlands), the team used standard printing techniques to combine graphene nanosheets as the electrodes with two other nanomaterials, tungsten diselenide and boron nitride [aka, 'white graphene'] as the channel and separator (two important parts of a transistor) to form an all-printed, all-nanosheet, working transistor.

Phys.org, April 6, 2017 - Researchers make major breakthrough in smart printed electronics.

Using three different materials the team printed all the parts necessary to make 2D transistors! The photo shows one of the profs holding a 3x3 inch square with circuitry inside. They dissolve the materials in liquid form, print them in what combinations are needed, and sandwich with a protective cover.

I wonder what else they can add? Maybe some of the graphene quantum dots? A cheap OLED that you can wear like a watch and it flashes different colors--like a mood ring from the 70s! There you go! Completely useless use of technology but all the kids will want one!

Graphen's killer app? Idk. But it shows one method on how to do this. They even licensed it to Samsung, so who knows. Our 2D future has taken a large step. Cool move there Ireland!!

Two...

Now, a variation of Vantablack (known as Vantablack S-VIS) is available in a spray-on form that blocks 99.8 percent of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light — enough to make an otherwise detailed 3D object appear as a flat black void.

"If you see [Vantablack S-VIS] on a flat surface on its own, with no other black material to reference it against, it just looks like a black velvet surface," Ben Jensen, chief technical officer for Surrey NanoSystems, recently told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC). "If you see it on a 3D object, like crinkled foil, the coated side still looks like a black two-dimensional flat surface. It's only when you turn it around and you realize that it's got a lot of dimensionality, that you grasp how different it is."

LIVEScience.com - World's Blackest Material Now Comes in a Spray Can.

Whoa! Somebody call Spinal Tap! I have an idea for their new album cover!!

For those that do not know what "vantablack" is it was created for an artist who wanted a special black color for his installation. The name is an acronym for "Vertically Aligned NanoTube Arrays" (Wikipedia), as in "carbon nanotube." There is a photo out there of a ball that was painted with it and it looks like a photoshoped flat hole on the picture! The article quoted has an explanation comparing it to trees blocking sunlight but the trees being 30 km tall! That is how it works.

Now available in a spray can?!?!! All I need is a can of this and some graphene aerogel...

Three... sort of. It is a bit of a stretch and maybe this should be its own thread...

Using five ingredients -- silicon, boron, carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen -- [researchers have] created a liquid polymer that can transform into a ceramic with valuable thermal, optical and electronic properties. The waterlike polymer, which becomes a ceramic when heated, also can be mass-produced.
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When combined with carbon nanotubes, the polymer has even more applications. It can create a black material that can absorb all light -- even ultraviolet and infrared light -- without being damaged. The combined nanomaterial can withstand extreme heat of 15,000 watts per square centimeter, which is about 10 times more heat than a rocket nozzle.

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• The presence of silicon and graphenelike carbon in the ceramic can improve electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.

The ceramic derived from this polymer has a random structure that is generally not observed in traditional ceramics. The silicon in the ceramic bonds to nitrogen and carbon but not boron; boron bonds to nitrogen but not carbon; and carbon bonds to another carbon to form graphenelike strings. This unique structure provides stability at high temperature by delaying reaction with oxygen.

ScienceDaily.com, March 30, 217 - Engineer Patents Waterlike Polymer to Create High-Temperature Ceramics.

This is huge news! Like, world changing news! You can heat it partially up and it becomes a gel. As in "inject molding" manufacturing. This can be used to line pipes to prevent corrosion. Add in CNTs and make turbine blades for supercritical CO2 turbines. Line pipes for OTEC usage (ATS here). You can take the CO2 flue gas, turn it into CNTs, and add it to this to manufacture... what you would like! A light weight ceramic with graphene strength... oh man, it is very hard to not get excited about this news!

This is graphene's killer app!

The engineers worked out carefully controlled procedures to place single sheets of graphene onto an expensive wafer. They then grew semiconducting material over the graphene layer. They found that graphene is thin enough to appear electrically invisible, allowing the top layer to see through the graphene to the underlying crystalline wafer, imprinting its patterns without being influenced by the graphene.

Graphene is also rather "slippery" and does not tend to stick to other materials easily, enabling the engineers to simply peel the top semiconducting layer from the wafer after its structures have been imprinted.
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"The industry has been stuck on silicon, and even though we've known about better performing semiconductors, we haven't been able to use them, because of their cost," Kim says. "This gives the industry freedom in choosing semiconductor materials by performance and not cost."

Phys.org, Graphene 'copy machine' may produce cheap semiconductor wafers.

Isn't that a neat trick! They say in the article, using other materials that work better than silicon is a problem because the material tends to bond to the wafer. That is a "one use" and this is a "many use" method for the wafer.

Of course it was discovered at/by MIT. Cheap semiconductors are a good thing. Cutting down on etching and/or acid washes is also good. The caveat? Now, if it can scale up.

PS -AtoZ nano has a weekly graphene newsletter you can sign up for with a valid email address.

Saint Jean Carbon Inc. …, a carbon science company engaged in the design and build of green energy storage, green energy creation and green re-creation through the use of carbon materials. The Company is pleased to announce the results of the graphene battery project phase one of three, previously announced on January 19th, 2017. …Both batteries were made with the same material, battery "A" graphite anode and "B" graphene anode.

The performance results are as follows; the theoretical capacity of the graphite anode: 372 mAh/g the theoretical capacity of the graphene anode: 700 mAh/g. Over 100 cycles the discharge capacity for the graphite was 200 to 220 mAh/g and for the graphene 310 to 330 mAh/g. The testing procedures: charge to 3V at 500 mA/g and discharge to 0.05V at 100 mA/g. Neither the graphite nor graphene were optimized so the variations in the results need to be further tested.

Yahoo! Finance, April 20, 2017 – Saint Jean Carbon Graphene Battery Phase One Results.

Wow, they even printed the numbers! The “mAh/g” is the measure of energy storage and means “milliamp hour per gram” and theoretical for current Li-ion is around 275 mAh/g (sciencedirect chart) for example. So 300 is a decent step before they even optimize so it can only increase! If they can get, let’s say, 75% of the way there with graphene that would be 525 mAh/g which would be a dramatic leap over Li-ion. The number of discharges needs to increase as well.

Paul Ogilvie, CEO, commented: "The project started as material comparison, the same material but applied in to different states, graphene and graphite. It will be really interesting to see if we can scale up to a size of battery that would be meaningful.

(same source)

And there’s the rub: scaling up to size. It is one thing to have a dime size, single layer anode on a lab bench but different to have a AAA flashlight battery! But it has been years since work has started. I haven’t heard a peep from that Australian company making a graphene battery so it is really nice to hear, and see numbers, from this Canadian company. The article says phase two is to create pouches of both materials and test them. They expect results in the next eight weeks (so mid-June).

Go graphene!!

Qian Cheng, a researcher from NEC Corporation in Japan, has developed a porous graphene sponge additive, known as Magic G, that can be used in both the anode and the cathode of a lithium-ion battery to increase its rate and power performance.
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When compared to other non-Magic G Li-ion batteries, the addition of 0.5 %wt addition into the anode improved the charge capacity retention from 56% to 77% at 6 cycles and from 7% to 45% at 10 cycles.

In the cathode, the same amount of Magic G was incorporated and showed an increase in the discharge capacity rate from 43% to 76% at 6 cycles and an increase from 16% to 40% at 10 cycles.

AtoZnano.com, April 24, 2017 - Graphene Sponge Additives Can Be Used to Enhance Lithium Battery Performance.

Just '0.5%' by weight??! Uh, why has this not been done until now? I know, "10 to 20 years" black project answer but back what 5 years ago there was talk of the "graphene battery". The previous post is what I would like to see. "Here is Phase 1" and the second will be done in 8 weeks. Meanwhile, how many stories about "graphene used in batteries" have there been? Even I stopped posting them because there are 2 or 3 a month... and still no battery!!

I am becoming jaded about "graphene battery" news. Until I have one in my grubby little hand will I believe it is real.

Now, Nippon Shokubai Co.,... has resolved various problems associated with the oxidation reaction, making it possible to scale up production “several dozens of times” more than laboratory scale. The achievement, performed in collaboration with Okayama University and support from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization,.. enabled the company to prepare materials in quantities sufficient for application development.

Chemical Engineering Online (chemengonline.com), May 1, 2017 - Scaleup for the production of graphene oxides.

They made three forms. One in water solution, one in solvent, and a powder. The step out of the lab for graphene? That has been "announced" more times than I can remember. Slightly optimistic though. Seems like the smart approach is to get the difficult, chemical, and/or labor intensive part solved so mass quantities can be made.

I wonder who is working on the graphene sheet-to-sheet film production?

An international team of scientists has developed a new way to produce single-layer graphene from a simple precursor: ethene - also known as ethylene - the smallest alkene molecule, which contains just two atoms of carbon.

By heating the ethene in stages to a temperature of slightly more than 700 degrees Celsius—hotter than had been attempted before - the researchers produced pure layers of graphene on a rhodium catalyst substrate. The stepwise heating and higher temperature overcame challenges seen in earlier efforts to produce graphene directly from hydrocarbon precursors.

phys.org, May 4, 2017 - High temperature step-by-step process makes graphene from ethane.

It has to be stepwise. They also do this in an ultra high vacuum. The article also says it is a vary narrow heat window. The funniest thing they said was basically, "now that we made high quality 2D graphene, we're going to have to figure out a way to remove it from the substrate"! The hydrogen reacts with the substrate which helps the bond form rings of 24 carbon atoms each with hydrogen on the outer edge. The higher temps then "cook off" the excess hydrogen leaving the carbon atoms to self arrange into the hexagonal graphene pattern.

Reminds of brewing beer! You have to hit your temps there too to have the naturally occurring enzymes convert the barley starch to sugars for fermenting.

Finally, some real results!

It will be distributed in the UK through The Graphene Company, which claims Graphenstone [paint manufacturer] is the most environmentally friendly paint in the world.
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Another environmental benefit comes from graphene's thinness and strength, which means less paint is required to achieve a durable finish that is resistant to corrosion. The Graphene Company says a litre of paint would cover two eight-metre-square coats.
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Manufacturer Graphenstone originates from Seville, Spain, where the purest qualities of lime in the world can be found.

But while this super-pure lime makes for highly absorbent and breathable paint, it lacks in strength. This is where graphene comes in.
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"For the first time in history you've got this fusion of one of the oldest and most trusted building materials, lime, with the very latest nanotechnology," said Folkes.

dezeen.com, May 30, 2017 - World's first graphene paint launches in the UK.

The article says that the paint goes on kind of liquid-y and thin. Over a week as it dries it hardens up to a thin coat. There are no fumes either! The "other economic benefit" mentioned is heat retention. It takes longer for hot air to exchange with the outside so your space stays warmer, longer.

Available in exterior and interior versions, if you are in the UK you can have a marriage of the old and the new in a paint.

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have reported that using graphene film managed to drastically enhance the quality of electron microscopy images.

Using low energy electrons does, however, have a significant drawback: because of its high sensitivity with matter, a low energy electron beam would interact with the target sample but also with everything else (like the support plate and film on which the sample is laying). The resulting image would not distinguish the study material from the background. To counter this effect, graphene was used; The researchers synthesized a film made of a single layer of graphene on which the biological samples, like the viruses they study, will be displayed. Graphene's highly conductive nature made sure that the low energy electrons will interact very little with the background graphene layer and much more with the virus sample which will stand out with a great contrast. This high conductivity also prevents "charging-up," an accumulation of electrons on the film that would distort the final image. The thinness of the film also provides a much brighter background, resulting in a much better contrast with the study material, than conventional carbon films.

Graphen-info.com, June 12, 2017 - Graphene to enhance the quality of electron microscopy images.

That is great news! Electrons are scattered off a target then computer assembles an image from that scattering. First, they switched to a low energy beam. The quote explains the issues involved with doing so. Graphene to the rescue! Well sort of. Because it is hydrophobic water would just bead up and roll off it! Next is seeing the atomically thin graphene itself. The article says they tried throwing the virus samples on the graphene but they clung to each other. So they spun the whole thing so the virus samples spread across the entire film. Then they got the results they were looking for. They do not use optics anymore!

I certainly would not want to be doing that with hemorrhagic fever viruses!!

Another miracle application of the wonder material graphene!

ETA: At the bottom of the article they say their samples are made in a sealed vacuum. No "Outbreak" scenario to fear TEOT!

Professor Baohua Jia and Dr Han Lin lead a team developing the Bolt Electricity Storage Technology (BEST) battery – a graphene oxide-based supercapacitor offering high performance and low-cost energy storage.

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The seeds of the BEST project were sown in 2015, with a $375,000 Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant for direct laser printing of thin films of activated graphene oxide. Graphene material is very porous, which gives it a hugely increased surface area on which to store electrical charge. The project aims to create a supercapacitor that could more efficiently collect, store and discharge the energy collected by solar cells.
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"In this process, no ions are being generated or being killed," Dr Lin says. "They are maintained by charge and discharge, and are just moved around. Moving ions doesn't degrade the supercapacitor, so it can charge millions of times, in theory. Usually, a supercapacitor can work for at least 10,000 life-cycles."

That "in theory" is important. The efficacy of graphene oxide has been proven in the laboratory.

Making a commercial prototype is the next step.

phys.org, June 14, 2017 - Breakthrough technology makes batteries safe and sustainable.

They go on to say it would take about 8 weeks to make a prototype in the lab. They filed a patent last year. And part of the article speaks of funding; the have 2 million to develop their graphene supercapacitor (I really wish people would not use both terms interchangeably because a capacitor is not a battery!).

If this scales to production levels that would be wonderful! This could be end of the poisonous chemical batteries. Even the researchers are kind of blown away by that thought because that is how the article ends.

Again, until I can hold one in my grubby hands...

Making Graphene in Bulk the Easy Way: Electrochemical Exfoliation of Graphite

The Thought Emporium’s approach to harvesting graphene from graphite is a two-step process starting with electrochemical exfoliation. Strips of thin graphite foil are electrolyzed in a bath of ferrous sulfate, resulting in the graphite delaminating and flaking off into the electrolyte. After filtering and cleaning, the almost graphene is further exfoliated in an ultrasonic cleaner. The result is gram quantity yields with very little work and at low cost.

Hackaday.com, June 17, 2017 - Graphene from Graphite by Electrochemical Exfoliation.

Finally a different approach to making graphene! Thanks Hackaday for posting the video too!

While not at a sheet of the stuff or roll-to-roll processing a vast improvement over the 23 steps of heating and chemical exfoliation currently being done. Vastly easier means cheaper production costs!

We have graphene flakes figured out. Can I get some to give to a blacksmith and get a blade commissioned? Maybe somebody has a method to suspend flakes and let self-assemble into sheets? That would unlock the door.

Is this the break-through to our graphene future?!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

How about this? Graphene powder spread onto a letter sized laminating pouch and run through the machine.

a reply to: daskakik

Yes! So we need to introduce the two to each other!

There is also a suspension of graphene in liquid that self assembles. I can't seem to find where that was (keep getting "bio" results of self-assembly when searching). Maybe it was even in air!

Anyway, cheap graphene flakes is a big first step. Then steps like your reply shows can happen. Or investigated more easily. Maybe even something like a toner cartridge of graphene flakes stitched together when "printing" onto a substrate. The easy, cheap flake production is the key!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Maybe this:

a reply to: daskakik

This technique requires two things: a commercially available suspension of low-quality graphene flakes, and kinetic energy. The fluid is passed through a de Laval nozzle, which is generally used to accelerate the expulsion of gas in a jet engine. As a fluid (liquid or gas) moves through the nozzle, its pinched center forces the flow intensity to increase, like putting your thumb over half of a hose. With a de Laval nozzle, the researchers can smash graphene flakes into just about any hard surface with enough force to flatten them out, Silly Putty style.

geek.com (2014) - Supersonic engine nozzle sprays sheets of flawless, self-healing grapheme.

A spray coating method from a couple years ago! The flake announcement... it are these ideas that need to be tested. Sprayed graphene onto diamond. That is kind of where I'm thinking for mass production.

I like this guy! To bad aluminum foil is not atomically flat or that would work! Unfortunately it is also stuck to the substrate (varnish). Transfer free graphene production usually involves carbon chemically deposited on flat surface then heated. All of that can be chucked out the window and they can work on getting those graphene flakes to line up. Maybe like the carbon nanotube Teslaphoresis video I posted a wile back. It can be done in solution.

All fun stuff to think about!

Ora Sound, a Montreal-based startup, hopes to change all that. On 20 June, it unveiled a Kickstarter campaign for a new audiophile-grade headphone that uses cones, also known as membranes, made of a form of graphene. “To the best of our knowledge, we are the first company to find a significant, commercially viable application for graphene,” says Ora cofounder Ari Pinkas, noting that the cones in the headphones are 95 percent graphene.
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The Ora prototype is clearly superior to the comparison models, but that’s not much of a surprise. The other units sell for about $100, while the Ora headphones will have a suggested retail of $499 when they are in production.
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Gaskell claims that Ora’s graphene cone weighs only one-third as much as a comparable mylar one, which translates into an increase in battery life of up to 70 percent.

IEEE.org, Spectrum, June 20, 2017 - Montreal-based Startup Ora Releases Novel Graphene-Based Headphones.

Over the course of several paragraphs they explain that the graphene has been functionalized by adding an oxygen molecule to a graphene flake; from there they can add other flakes or other molecules. They also mold it into shape so this is not a flat sheet. The article author did a sound test with other audiophile headphones and was duly impressed.

I think the limestone-graphene paint beat them out buy a few week but looks like there is now a prosumer headphones that you can start saving the money from your paper route for! I know I will! Although a graphene jacket might even be more functional I do use headphone daily at work. So jealous...

Keep on rocking in the free world!!!