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SPONSOR: Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V: GRAT) Advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products, most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. Collaborating with Perpetuus, Gratomic will use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. For More Info Click Here

Graphene, a dynamic material made of a one-atom-thick sheet of linked carbon atoms, was previously shown to stop steel from rusting. But soon it will also see use stopping bacteria from corroding metal pipes, according to a study published in the journal ACS Nano.

Graphene can stop bacterial corrosion of metal pipes

Within wastewater-processing facilities like sewage treatment plants, microbes called sulfate-reducing bacteria often colonize the inside surfaces of pipes and other equipment, reports New Atlas. Bacterial colonies take the form of what scientists call “biofilms,” and can develop in just 10 days after the pipes have been cleaned — after which they degrade metal pipes into primary ways.

First, the bacterial microbes remove electrons from the surface of the metal while they respire (or breathe). Second, while the bacteria consume organic matter from the water, they produce hydrogen sulfide, a corrosive chemical to metal pipes.

Overcoming limits of bacteria in metal tube coating

While protective polymer coatings may be applied to the interiors of metal pipes, the coatings themselves can become degraded as the bacteria consume their internal plasticizers. Additionally, such protective coatings may become brittle over time, cracking and flaking right off of the pipe surface, after which it enters the water stream.

Because of these limitations, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology research scientist Govind Chilkoor is considering the use of graphene as an alternative primary coating. During lab testing, Chilkoor found that even a single graphene layer — measuring less than 1 nanometer thick — was highly effective at preventing sulfate-reducing bacteria from latching on to the interior surface of metal pipes.

“Graphene can be very antimicrobial,” said Chilkoor, reports New Atlas. “It can induce oxidative stress and the bacteria will die.”

SOURCE: https://interestingengineering.com/graphene-shields-metal-pipes-from-corrosive-bacteria

SPONSOR: Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V: GRAT) Advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products, most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. Collaborating with Perpetuus, Gratomic will use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. For More Info Click Here

 â€œThe execution of this LOI is part of NextSource’s downstream growth plan and brings together one of the best global processors of graphite anode material and one of the most prominent suppliers of graphite anode material to automotive OEMs globally,” says NextSource Materials president and CEO Craig Scherba.

“This letter of intent to partnership on a SPG plant with such established partners positions NextSource to be a significant and dominant future supplier of high-quality flake graphite to major battery anode customers globally and simultaneously gaining an immediate foothold into the high-growth markets for electric vehicles, as well as the burgeoning energy storage market that will be reliant on graphite anode material,” he adds.

As announced in October 2018, NextSource Materials signed a 10-year offtake agreement with an unnamed Japanese trading company to purchase 20 000 tpa of Molo’s trademarked SuperFlake graphite for use in battery anode applications for electric and hybrid vehicles.

NextSource’s Japanese partner is a major supplier of SPG for anode material in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle applications. Its electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle automotive anode customers are global and currently supply graphite anode material to the majority of Japanese automotive OEMs.

Since 2018, NextSource Materials and its Japanese partner have been in discussions regarding potential supply chain collaboration to supply value-added graphite material using SuperFlake graphite concentrate.

Meanwhile, NextSource Materials’Chinese partner is one of the top processors of spheronized and purified graphite for the electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle markets and has verified that NextSource’s SuperFlake graphite concentrate meets or exceeds all quality requirements for SPG material for electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle automotive applications.

Its electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle anode customers are global, including the North American market and its interest in the partnership with NextSource and the its Japanese partner is to have an additional SPG facility located outside of China and close to a high-quality mine source of flake graphite to supply international automotive OEM customers.

The Molo graphite project is a fully permitted, feasibility-stage project that ranks as one of the largest-known and highest quality flake graphite deposits in the world and is the only project with SuperFlake graphite.

SOURCE: https://www.miningreview.com/east-africa/battery-materials-developer-to-collaborate-on-battery-anode-plant/

SPONSOR: Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V: GRAT) Advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products, most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. Collaborating with Perpetuus, Gratomic will use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. For More Info Click Here

Graphene is only one-atom thick in its monolayer form and approximately 0.32 nanometers in the Z-axis. This means that the third dimension is eliminated, and it is classed as a 2D, all-surface material. Put into perspective, a stack of three million graphene sheets would only be 1 mm thick

Graphene in its monolayer form is the strongest material ever tested despite being extremely thin, a strength that comes in part from its flexibility which means it is also the most stretchable crystal material measured to date. It is also 97.7 percent transparent and has an extremely low permeability rate, with even helium atoms being unable to penetrate it.

Graphene also boasts the highest thermal conductivity ever recorded, standing at 10 times higher than copper. Further adding to its advantages as a material is the fact that it has the highest intrinsic electron mobility that is approximately 100 times greater than silicon. This property, in particular, has intrigued electronics applications for the last 15 years.

Engineered Properties Applications

Table 1. Graphene’s Properties and Associated Applications. 

Source: Graphene Frontiers, Ruoff.

Altogether, these properties make graphene the latest “wonder material” in advanced materials science and technology. This has resulted in research on other 2D materials that are analogous to graphene, from hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and black phosphorus, to silicene, germanene, and others.

The wider group of 2D materials is significant in relation to graphene as it exhibits a wider spectrum of electronic properties when compared to metals, semimetals, and semiconductors that all have different gaps in their energy bands, as well as insulators.

Additionally, combining the materials in this wider 2D group through layering results in heterostructures that possess unique physical properties of their own. This range of 2D materials and the heterostructures that can be formed when these 2D materials work in combination have a broad spectrum of applications, including electronics, optoelectronics, sensors, flexible and wearable devices, catalysis, and more.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by The Graphene Council.

SOURCE: For more information on this source, please visit The Graphene Council.

SPONSOR: Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V: GRAT) Advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products, most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. Collaborating with Perpetuus, Gratomic will use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. For More Info Click Here

In the weeks since the Physics World team kicked off the new year by testing a pair of graphene headphones, we’ve received a steady stream of comments about our review and a related segment on our weekly podcast. A few people have asked our opinion of other graphene headphones, and one man went so far as to question whether the “graphene” label he found on an inexpensive pair of headphones was anything more than “misleading click-bait”.

I can’t judge any product I haven’t tried, and I also can’t judge a product’s graphene content without taking it apart and getting experts to analyse it. However, with those two caveats firmly in place, here are two facts to consider should you happen to be in the market for graphene headphones (and, by extension, graphene anything).

First, a lot of things contribute to how a pair of headphones will sound. The physical composition of the headphone drivers (graphene, PET, cellulose, or whatever) is only one factor. Others include the method by which those drivers create sound (this blog post explains a few of the possibilities, and their trade-offs); the quality of the other electronics; and simple things like how well the headphones fit over/in your ears. Some of these things are more expensive to optimize than others. The graphene headphones I tested are a high-end product with, it appears, a high-end price, so I suspect they are pretty good at the non-graphene-related aspects of headphone design – and that much of their cost comes from that, not from the graphene.

Second, graphene exists in many forms, with many price points. A lot of physicists are interested in ultra-pure, single-layer graphene, which has amazing electronic properties. This “physicists’ graphene” is difficult (and expensive) to make in macroscopic quantities. However, others are more interested in graphene’s mechanical properties, such as strength and rigidity. To get these properties, you don’t need ultra-pure single-layer graphene. You can get by with a cheaper type, which for argument’s sake I will term “materials scientists’ graphene” (this is an oversimplification, but it conveys the right feel). The proprietary graphene-based material in the headphones I tested was most likely in this category.

But even this type of graphene is expensive relative to a third type of graphene, which is cheap enough to be added in bulk to substances like paint or resin to improve their heat transport and/or electrical conductivity. As I understand it, this “engineers’ graphene” functions like a superior version of graphite, and manufacturers are selling it by the kilo (and maybe, soon, by the tonne).

I’m not trying to start a three-way brawl between physicists, materials scientists and engineers about which type of graphene is better. They all have their uses, and they all qualify as graphene. But here’s the problem: a product can advertise itself, accurately, as containing graphene even if the graphene it contains is not of a type or quantity that’s going to make a difference to its performance. What’s more, if an unscrupulous manufacturer wants to put graphite in its product and call it “graphene”, it’s hard for ordinary consumers to know the difference. To the naked eye, graphene and graphite both look like gritty black powders. You need more sophisticated testing equipment to distinguish between them, and between the various grades of graphene.

Certification is a huge issue for the graphene industry, and a lot of people are working on it. However, until there’s a strong framework for regulation, the next best thing is probably to look for independent endorsements by people and organizations who know what they’re talking about. The headphones I tried were endorsed by the co-discoverer of graphene, Kostya Novoselov, as making good use of the material. Since then, I’ve learned of a different make of graphene headphones that has been endorsed by an industry body called the Graphene Council. However, until someone gives Physics World its own product-testing lab and qualified technicians to run it, that’s about all I can say – except to add that there are some graphene products I definitely won’t be testing with my colleagues.

SOURCE:https://physicsworld.com/a/graphene-for-physicists-materials-scientists-and-engineers/

SPONSOR: Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V: GRAT) Advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products, most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. Collaborating with Perpetuus, Gratomic will use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. For More Info Click Here

A new technique to make ultra-flat, wrinkle-free films of graphene could pave the way for a host of applications, including graphene-based flexible electronics and high-frequency transistors. The technique works by introducing protons into the film as graphene is synthesized using chemical vapour deposition (CVD), and its inventors say that it might be extended to other two-dimensional materials such hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and the transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). It could also aid the development of hydrogen storage devices made from layered 2D structures.

Graphene – a 2D honeycomb of carbon atoms just one atom thick – boasts several unique electronic properties. In contrast to conventional semiconductors, which have an energy gap between the electron valence and conduction bands, graphene is a “zero-gap” semiconductor. This means its electron valence and conduction bands just touch each other. At the point of contact, the electrons move at near-ballistic speeds, and their behaviour is governed by the Dirac equation for relativistic electrons – hence the name “Dirac point” for this section of graphene’s band structure.

Linear defects

So far, this electronic behaviour has only been observed in small flakes of graphene that have been shaved off, or exfoliated, from samples of bulk graphite. These flakes are not big enough to be practical for electronic circuits, and although larger, wafer-sized graphene films can easily be produced via CVD, their electronic performance is not as good. This is because CVD-grown graphene, unlike the exfoliated type, contains grain boundaries, atomic vacancies, impurities and wrinkles. These defects act as centres off which electrons can scatter as they travel, thus degrading the material’s electronic properties.

CVD-produced graphene is prone to wrinkling because the graphene must adhere to the surface of a substrate as it grows. If the thermal expansion coefficient of the substrate does not match that of the graphene itself, a change in temperature can lead to linear defects – wrinkles – forming as the ensemble strives to release compressive strain.

Researchers have attempted to reduce wrinkling by performing CVD at low temperatures, using substrates with a similar thermal coefficient to that of graphene, and developing single-crystalline substrates. A team of researchers led by Libo Gao at China’s Nanjing University has now shown that reducing the interaction between graphene and its substrate might be a good, alternative, strategy.

Intercalating hydrogen molecules

The Nanjing team began by introducing a plasma of protons – hydrogen ions – into the graphene’s growth chamber. During the CVD process, some of this hydrogen became intercalated between the graphene and its substrate, causing the two materials to decouple.

Gao and colleagues found that some of the wrinkles disappeared entirely from the graphene thanks to this proton penetration. They believe this is due to decreased van der Waals interactions between the carbon sheet and the substrate, as well as – possibly – an increase in the substrate’s distance from the growth surface thanks to the intercalation process.

High-quality bilayer graphene goes large

The researchers also found that the electronic band structure of their graphene films shows a V-shaped “Dirac cone” (representing the density of states around the Dirac point) similar to the one observed in exfoliated graphene. They argue that this proves the proton-assisted CVD-grown graphene is indeed decoupled from its substrate.

The technique, which is detailed in Nature, could be extended to grow ultra-flat versions of other 2D materials, such as h-BN and the TMDCs, Gao says. It might also make it possible to develop hydrogen storage devices made from these layered materials.

“The physical and electronic properties of our ultra-flat graphene films are homogenous on the large scale, which means they might now be used in higher-performance electronic and photoelectronic devices,” he tells Physics World.

Source:https://physicsworld.com/a/ultra-flat-graphene-goes-wrinkle-free/

SPONSOR: Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V: GRAT) Advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products, most notably high value graphene based components for a range of mass market products. Collaborating with Perpetuus, Gratomic will use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. For More Info Click Here

• “Experts say we are approaching a tipping point for graphene commercialisation”

Andy Burnham, Mayor for Greater Manchester, made a fact-finding tour of facilities that are pioneering graphene innovation at The University of Manchester.

The Mayor toured the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) which is an industry-facing facility specialising in the rapid development and scale up of graphene and other 2D materials applications.

As well as state-of-the art labs and equipment, the Mayor was also shown examples of commercialisation – including the world’s first-ever sports shoes to use graphene which has been produced by specialist sports footwear company inov-8 who are based in the North.

Andy Burnham – a running enthusiast who has previously participated in a number of marathons – has promised to put a pair of graphene trainers to the test and feedback his own experiences to researchers based at The University of Manchester. “Manchester is the home of graphene – and when you see the brilliant work and the products now being developed with the help of the Graphene@Manchester team it’s clear why this city-region maintains global leadership in research and innovation around this fantastic advanced material.” Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester Mayor

By collaborating with graphene experts in Manchester, inov-8 has been able to develop a graphene-enhanced rubber which they now use for outsoles in a new range of running and fitness shoes. In testing, the groundbreaking G-SERIES shoes have outlasted 1,000 miles and are scientifically proven to be 50% stronger, 50% more elastic and 50% harder wearing.

“Manchester is the home of graphene – and when you see the brilliant work and the products now being developed with the help of the Graphene@Manchester team it’s clear why this city-region maintains global leadership in research and innovation around this fantastic advanced material,” said Andy Burnham.

“I have been very impressed with the exciting model of innovation the University has pioneered in our city-region, with the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre playing a vital role by working with its many business partners to take breakthrough science from the lab and apply it to real world challenges.

“And thanks to world firsts, like the graphene running shoe, the application of graphene is now gaining real pace. In fact, the experts say we are approaching a tipping point for graphene commercialisation – and this is being led right here in Greater Manchester.”

Source: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/mayor-praises-manchester-model-of-innovation-as-graphene-applications-gain-real-pace/