| To: Hawkmoon who wrote (352) | 3/27/2017 6:23:35 AM | | From: vitalremains | | | | probably wouldn't have shared if it hadn't been posted by IBM Research, but upon reflection what's interesting to me about this video is the ease of biocompatibility shown and the biomedical applications that could be possible
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I also just searched the word "graphene" on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website (U.S. government-funded national resource for molecular biology information) and came up with 42,632 results:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov |
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| From: vitalremains | 3/28/2017 10:16:47 AM | | | | | | Sir Richard Branson says planes will be made from wonder material graphene 'in 10 years'
By James Quinn, in Seattle
28 MARCH 2017
telegraph.co.uk
Sir Richard Branson has raised the prospect of planes being made entirely from the so-called wonder material graphene within 10 years, as the airline industry battles a 50pc increase in fuel in the last 12 months, sparking a desperate need for ever lighter fleets.
The Virgin Atlantic president, who founded the airline in 1984, described the super-lightweight material as a 'breakthrough technology', which he said could help revolutionize the airline industry and transform its cost base.
Speaking in Seattle, where the British airline has just begun flying on a daily basis for the first time, Sir Richard said: "Graphene is even lighter [than carbon fibre], many times lighter and many times stronger."
"Hopefully graphene can be the planes of the future, if you go 10 years down the line. They would be massively lighter than the current planes, which again would make a difference on fuel burn."
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms forming a regular hexagonal pattern, and is extracted from graphite. It has a litany of uses and is said to be as light as a feather yet stronger than steel.
The entrepreneur likened the push for graphene planes to his previous encouragement of Airbus and Boeing to make planes from carbon fibre, a battle he eventually won. Boeing's latest 787 Dreamliner planes, which Virgin is flying on the London Heathrow-Seattle route, are made from 50pc carbon fibre and other composite materials, as opposed to the traditional 100pc aluminium. As a result, they use 30pc less fuel than a standard alternative.
Sir Richard said the airline was still committed to reducing its carbon footprint through using cleaner fuels.
Virgin Atlantic is working with US-based clean fuels specialist Lanzatech on a biological process to convert carbon waste from manufacturing processes into ethanol, which in turn can be converted into jet fuel.
Although the product has yet to be scaled, Virgin bosses are hopeful it could revolutionize the way the fleet consumes fuel.
"If you take all the steel plants and all the aluminium plants around the world and take all the s*** that goes up the chimneys, and then you turn that into jet aviation fuel, something like 30-40pc could be powered that way," he went on.
"The question is: are they going to be able to scale it up enough to really make a difference?"
His comments come a day after Virgin Atlantic chief executive Craig Kreeger admitted the airline was forecast to make a loss this year due to higher fuel costs, and lower revenues because of sterling's weakness.
The airline made a £23m profit in 2016, up £500,000 on 2015.
Sir Richard owns a 51pc stake in Virgin Atlantic through his Virgin Group. |
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| From: DanD | 3/31/2017 11:14:51 PM | | | | | | This advance could finally make graphene-based semiconductor chips feasible
http://www.kurzweilai.net/this-advance-could-finally-make-graphene-based-semiconductor-chips-feasible
March 31, 2017
 Atomic force microscopy images of as-deposited (left) and laser-annealed (right) reduced graphene oxide (rGO) thin films. The entire “pulsed laser annealing” process is done at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, using high-power laser pulses to convert p-type rGO material into n-type and completed in about one fifth of a microsecond. (credit: Anagh Bhaumik and Jagdish Narayan/Journal of Applied Physics)
Researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State) have developed a layered material that can be used to develop transistors based on graphene — a long-sought goal in the electronics industry.
Graphene has attractive properties, such as extremely high conductivity, meaning it conducts the flow of electrical current really well (compared to copper, for example), but it’s not a semiconductor, so it can’t work in a transistor (aside from providing great connections). A form of graphene called “graphene oxide” is a semiconductor, but it does not conduct well.
However, a form of graphene oxide called “reduced graphene oxide” (rGO) does conduct well*. Despite that, rGO still can’t function in a transistor. That’s because the design of a transistor is based on creating a junction between two materials: one that is positively charged (p-type) and one that is negatively charged (n-type), and native rGO is only a p-type.
The NC State researchers’ solution was to use high-powered laser pulses to disrupt chemical groups on an rGO thin film. This disruption moved electrons from one group to another, effectively converting p-type rGO to n-type rGO. They then used the two forms of rGO as two layers (a layer of n-type rGO on the surface and a layer of p-type rGO underneath) — creating a layered thin-film material that could be used to develop rGO-based transistors for use in future semiconductor chips.
The researchers were also able to integrate the rGO-based transistors onto sapphire and silicon wafers across the entire wafer.
The paper was published in the Journal of Applied Physics. The work was done with support from the National Science Foundation.
* Reduction is a chemical reaction that involves the gaining of electrons.
Abstract of Conversion of p to n-type reduced graphene oxide by laser annealing at room temperature and pressurePhysical properties of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) are strongly dependent on the ratio of sp2 to sp3hybridized carbon atoms and the presence of different functional groups in its structural framework. This research for the very first time illustrates successful wafer scale integration of graphene-related materials by a pulsed laser deposition technique, and controlled conversion of p to n-type 2D rGO by pulsed laser annealing using a nanosecond ArF excimer laser. Reduced graphene oxide is grown onto c-sapphire by employing pulsed laser deposition in a laser MBE chamber and is intrinsically p-type in nature. Subsequent laser annealing converts p into n-type rGO. The XRD, SEM, and Raman spectroscopy indicate the presence of large-area rGO onto c-sapphire having Raman-active vibrational modes: D, G, and 2D. High-resolution SEM and AFM reveal the morphology due to interfacial instability and formation of n-type rGO. Temperature-dependent resistance data of rGO thin films follow the Efros-Shklovskii variable-range-hopping model in the low-temperature region and Arrhenius conduction in the high-temperature regime. The photoluminescence spectra also reveal less intense and broader blue fluorescence spectra, indicating the presence of miniature sized sp2 domains in the vicinity of p* electronic states, which favor the VRH transport phenomena. The XPS results reveal a reduction of the rGO network after laser annealing with the C/O ratio measuring as high as 23% after laser-assisted reduction. The p to n-type conversion is due to the reduction of the rGO framework which also decreases the ratio of the intensity of the D peak to that of the G peak as it is evident from the Raman spectra. This wafer scale integration of rGO with c-sapphire and p to n-type conversion employing a laser annealing technique at room temperature and pressure will be useful for large-area electronic devices and will open a new frontier for further extensive research in graphene-based functionalized 2D materials.
references: Anagh Bhaumik and Jagdish Narayan. Conversion of p to n-type Reduced Graphene Oxide by Laser Annealing at Room Temperature and Pressure. March 29, Journal of Applied Physics; DOI: 10.1063/1.4979211 (open access)
Topics: Electronics |
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| From: DanD | 4/8/2017 11:50:02 AM | | | | | | Silicon and Graphene Combo Finally Achieve Lithium-Ion Battery Greatness
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 31 Mar 2016 | 20:00 GMT
 Illustration: Kansas State University/Nature Communications
Silicon, graphene, and sometimes the two of them combined together have all been suggested as potential replacements for graphite in the electrodes of lithium-ion batteries.
While all three of these options bring attractive properties to the table—most importantly, a very high theoretical capacity—those properties are lost in the real world. Silicon electrodes crack and break after just a short number of charge/discharge cycles. Meanwhile, the use of graphene on electrodes is limited because graphene’s attractive surface area is only possible in single stand-alone sheets, which don’t provide enough volumetric capacitance. Layer the graphene sheets on top of each other to gain that volumetric capacity, and you begin to lose that attractive surface area.
Now researchers at Kansas State University (KSU) claim to have developed a technique that uses silicon oxycarbide that makes the combination of silicon and graphene achieve its expected greatness as an electrode material.
“Silicon combined with graphene is better than a bulk silicon electrode,” explained Gurpreet Singh, an associate professor at KSU and one of the researchers, in an e-mail interview with IEEE Spectrum. “However, nano-silicon/graphene electrodes fail to satisfy key requirements for any practical applications.” Among other things, they have poor volumetric capacity, high cost, and low cycling efficiency—too much lithium is lost irreversibly with each charge-discharge cycle. What’s more, their mechanical and chemical instability that can lead to rapid capacity decay.
To overcome this, the KSU researchers turned to the high temperature glass ceramic, silicon oxycarbide. In research described in the journal Nature Communications, the KSU team created a self-standing anode material consisting of silicon oxycarbide glass particles embedded into a chemically modified graphene oxide matrix.
A heated silicon resin decomposes so that “the constituent silicon, carbon, and oxygen atoms are arranged in a random 3-D structure, and any excess carbon precipitates out into string-like or cellular regions. Such an open 3-D structure renders large sites for reversible lithium storage and smooth channels for solvated lithium-ion transportation from the electrolyte.”
This stands in stark contrast to crystalline silicon, which undergoes an alloying reaction with lithium that results in enormous volume changes and also an irreversible reaction with the electrolyte that leads to chemical instability and fading capacity as the charge-discharge cycles add up.
The KSU researchers claim that the electrode has a capacity of approximately 600 miliampere-hour per gram or 400 miliampere-hour per cubic centimeter of the electrode after 1020 cycles. The researchers expect that the power density (the maximum amount of power that can be supplied per unit mass) will be more than three times that of today’s Li-ion batteries.
In future research, the KSU team aims to produce electrode materials with larger dimensions. As a benchmark, the researchers are looking at today’s pencil cell battery that uses a graphite-coated copper foil electrode, which is more than 30 cm in length.
Singh added: “We are also looking at batteries as structural materials, such as load bearing batteries that can be charged and discharged while under dynamic loads.” |
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