Films of platinum only two atoms thick supported by graphene could enable fuel cell catalysts with unprecedented catalytic activity and longevity, according to a study published recently by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with colleagues from University of Oxford, in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. This graphic shows... Read more →

An international research group has improved graphene’s ability to catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction, which releases hydrogen as a result of passing an electronic current through water. They designed a mathematically-predicted graphene electrocatalyst, and confirmed its performance using high resolution electrochemical microscopy and computational modelling. The findings were published in... Read more →

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a free-standing reduced graphene oxide (r-GO) aerogel for use as a supporting electrode for the electrochemical redox reaction of sulfur in a catholyte-based lithium-sulfur battery. A mesoporous matrix is formed by a layers of r-GO, providing sites for electrochemical reactions and... Read more →

Researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) have devised a process for converting retired Li-ion battery anodes to graphene and graphene oxide (GO). A paper on the work is published in the ACS journal Nano Letters. … accompanying the booming expansion of the Li-ion battery market, a tremendous amount of... Read more →

Nova Scotia-based Elcora Advanced Materials Corp. has been awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)-ENGAGE grant with Dr. Heather Andreas, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University. The project will focus on studying Elcora’s high-quality graphene as an electrode material for supercapacitors.... Read more →

Australian advanced materials technology company Talga Resources Ltd announced positive initial test results from the development of its graphene silicon lithium-ion anode in the UK. The results are the first under Talga’s UK Government funded “Safevolt” project—a Talga-led program run in conjunction with consortia partners, Johnson Matthey, the University of... Read more →

A team of researchers from institutions in China and the US report the design of a negatively charged graphene composite separator for the effective suppression of the polysulfide shuttling effect in Li-sulfur batteries. The negatively charged 3D porous structure effectively inhibits the translocation of negatively charged polysulfide ions to enable... Read more →

A team led by researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan has fabricated non-noble-metal electrodes for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) for electrochemical water splitting using a bicontinuous and open porous NiMo alloy covered by nitrogen-doped (N-doped) graphene with nanometer-sized holes. This noble-metal-free HER catalyst exhibits performance almost identical... Read more →

A research team led by the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed an economical and industrially viable strategy to produce graphene. The new technique addresses the long-standing challenge of an efficient process for large-scale production of graphene, and paves the way for sustainable synthesis of the material. Graphene is... Read more →

Dendritic growth of lithium (Li) on lithium metal anodes has hobbled the practical application of Li-metal batteries, despite their theoretical benefits such as high capacity and low redox potential. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with colleagues at Texas A&M University, have used a 3D conformal graphene... Read more →

Dr. Scott Jorgensen, a former General Motors Technical Fellow and principle at Hyrax Intercontinental LLC, recently joined Skeleton Technologies as an advisor to the Board to support the company in gaining market share for curved graphene ultracapacitors in the hybrid and electric vehicle market. In a 2010 paper published in... Read more →

A team in China has used graphene microsheets (GMs)—prepared from microcrystalline graphite minerals by an electrochemical & mechanical approach—as a special conductive support for sulfur for the cathode of a lithium-sulfur battery. The graphene microsheets feature excellent conductivity and low-defect, small sheet sizes of <1 μm2 and ≤ 6 atomic... Read more →

A Korean team led by researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) has developed “graphene balls”—graphene-silica 3D assemblies—that can be uniformly coated onto a nickel-rich layered cathode (LiNi0.6Co0.1Mn0.3O2). The graphene-ball coating improves cycle life and fast charging capability by protecting the electrode surface from detrimental side reactions and... Read more →

Huawei researchers recently unveiled what they said was the first long-lifespan graphene-assisted Li-ion battery able to withstand high temperatures. The announcement was made by Watt Laboratory, an organization under Huawei’s Central Research Institute, at the 57th Battery Symposium held in Japan. Huawei’s research results show that new graphene-assisted heat-resistant technologies... Read more →

Researchers at the University of Manchester (UK) have developed a graphene-based nano-rectifier (“ballistic rectifier”) that can convert waste heat to electricity. The nano-rectifier was built by a team led by Professor Aimin Song and Dr. Ernie Hill, in collaboration with a team at Shandong University (China). The device exploits graphene’s... Read more →

Researchers at Beihang University in Beijing have developed a new Li-sulfur battery using honeycomb-like sulfur copolymer uniformly distributed onto 3D graphene (3D cpS-G) networks for a cathode material and a 3D lithiated Si-G network as anode. In a paper published in the RSC journal Energy & Environmental Science, they reported... Read more →

Researchers at Kansas State University have developed a new high-performance Li-ion battery anode material combining silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) glass and graphene. The self-standing (i.e., no current collector or binder) anode material comprises molecular precursor-derived SiOC glass particles embedded in a chemically-modified reduced graphene oxide (rGO) matrix. The porous reduced graphene... Read more →

While many technical advances have made solar cells more efficient and affordable, a disadvantage remains in the fact that solar cells produce no power when it’s raining. Now, however, researchers from the Ocean University of China (Qingdao) and Yunnan Normal University (Kunming, China) have developed an all-weather solar cell that... Read more →

Material scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that certain graphene metal oxide (GMO) nanocomposites increase capacity and improve cycling performance in lithium-ion batteries. The team synthesized and compared the electrochemical performance of three representative graphene metal oxide nanocomposites—Fe2O3/graphene, SnO2/graphene, and TiO2/graphene—and found that two of them greatly improved... Read more →

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new, environmentally stable solid-state hydrogen storage material constructed of Mg nanocrystals encapsulated by atomically thin and gas-selective reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets. This material, protected from oxygen and moisture by the rGO layers, exhibits dense hydrogen storage (6.5 wt% and... Read more →

A team from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has developed a new practical, high-energy-capacity lithium-ion battery anode out of silicon by encapsulating Si microparticles (∼1–3 µm) using conformally synthesized cages of multilayered graphene. The graphene cage acts as a mechanically strong and flexible buffer during... Read more →

European ultracapacitor manufacturer Skeleton Technologies received a €4-million (US$4.4-million) investment from KIC InnoEnergy, an investment company dedicated to promoting sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe’s energy industry. The €4m investment from KIC InnoEnergy—the shareholders of which include ABB, EDF, Iberdrola and Total—will be used to further develop the competitive advantage... Read more →

Researchers at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering have found that crumpled graphene balls are an extremely promising lubricant additive. In a series of tests, a polyalphaolefin base oil with only 0.01–0.1 wt % of crumpled graphene balls outperformed a fully formulated commercial lubricant in terms of friction and wear... Read more →

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have found, through experiments and calculations, that hydrogen-treated graphene nanofoam (GNF) anodes in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) show higher capacity and faster transport. The research suggests that controlled hydrogen treatment may be used as a strategy for optimizing lithium transport and reversible storage in other graphene-based... Read more →

The Rice lab of chemist James Tour and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Houston have developed a robust, solid-state catalyst that shows promise to replace expensive platinum for hydrogen generation. The new electrocatalyst, based on very small... Read more →

Researchers in China have developed a self-supporting high-performance silicon anode for Li-ion batteries (LIBs) consisting of silicon-nanoparticle-impregnated assemblies of templated carbon-bridged oriented graphene. The binder-free anodes demonstrate exceptional lithium storage performances, simultaneously attaining high gravimetric capacity (1390 mAh g–1 at 2 A g–1 with respect to the total electrode weight);... Read more →

Researchers at the Tour Lab at Rice University developed an improved cost-effective approach using direct laser scribing to prepare graphene embedded with various types of metallic nanoparticles. The resulting metal oxide-laser induced graphene (MO-LIG) is highly active in electrochemical oxygen reduction reactions with a low metal loading of less than... Read more →

A new NSF-funded Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC) at Penn State and Rice University will study the design and development of advanced coatings based on two-dimensional (2D) layered materials to solve fundamental scientific and technological challenges that include: corrosion, oxidation and abrasion, friction and wear, energy storage and harvesting, and... Read more →

Researchers at the University of Manchester (UK) have shown that the thermal operating window of the thermoelectric material lanthanum strontium titanium oxide (LSTO) can be expanded down to room temperature by addition of a small amount of graphene. Applications of LSTO-based thermoelectric materials are currently limited by their high operating... Read more →

Argonne scientists have used the Mira supercomputer to identify and to improve a new mechanism for eliminating friction, which fed into the development of a hybrid material that exhibited superlubricity—a state in which friction essentially disappears—at the macroscale—i.e., at engineering scale—for the first time. A paper on their work was... Read more →

Researchers in China report the development of a rationally designed Li−S cathode consisting of a freestanding composite thin film assembled from sulfur nanoparticles, reduced graphene oxide (rGO), and a multifunctional additive poly(anthraquinonyl sulfide) (PAQS): nano-S:rGO:PAQS. The resulting cathode exhibits an initial specific capacity of 1255 mAh g−1 with a decay... Read more →

Market analyst firm Lux Research has maintained a skeptical stance about the commercial prospects of graphene even in the light of the material’s compelling properties. In a 2012 report “Is Graphene the Next Silicon...Or Just the Next Carbon Nanotube?”, Lux examined the interplay between graphene’s compelling performance properties as an... Read more →

Skeleton Technologies (earlier post) has launched a new range of cylindrical ultracapacitors that offers specific power performance of up to 111 kW/kg (SC450, 450F) and specific energy up to 9.6 Wh/kg (SC4500, 4500F) with ESR as low as 0.075 mΩ (SC3000, 3000F)—the highest performance cylindrical cell ultracapacitors in the market.... Read more →

A team at Samsung Advanced Institue of Technology (SAIT, Samsung’s global R&D hub) reports in an open access paper published in the journal Nature Communications on a new approach to advance high-capacity silicon (Si) anodes for Li-ion batteries (LIBs) to commercial viability, with a particular focus on improving the volumetric... Read more →

Researchers from Tsinghua University have developed what they call a “promising strategy” to tackle the intrinsic problems of lithium metal anodes for Lithium sulfur batteries—dendritic and mossy metal depositing on the anode during repeated cycles leading to serious safety concerns and low Coulombic efficiency. As described in a paper published... Read more →

Researchers at MIT are predicting that predict that suitable chemical functionalization of graphene can result in a large enhancement in the Seebeck coefficient for thermoelectric materials, leading to an increase in the room-temperature power factor of a factor of 2 compared to pristine graphene, despite degraded electrical conductivity. Furthermore, the... Read more →

A team at Beihang University in China has synthesized cathode materials for Li-sulfur batteries consisting of vertically aligned sulfur–graphene (S-G) nanowalls on electrically conductive substrates. In each individual S-G nanowall, the sulfur nanoparticles are homogeneously anchored between graphene layers; ordered graphene arrays arrange perpendicularly to the substrates, enabling fast diffusion... Read more →

Researchers from Northwestern University, together with collaborators from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Virginia, the University of Minnesota, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Puerto Rico, have discovered that protons can transfer easily through graphene—conventionally thought to be unfit for proton transfer absent nanoscale holes or dopants—through... Read more →

Drexel researchers, along with colleagues at Aix-Marseille University in France, have synthesized two-dimensional carbon/sulfur (C/S) nanolaminate materials. Covalent bonding between C and S is observed in the nanolaminates, which along with and an extremely uniform distribution of sulfur between the atomically thin carbon layers make them promising electrode materials for... Read more →

Researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) are proposing that it is possible to design an efficient graphene-cathode-based thermionic energy converter (TIC)—a device for converting heat to electricity leveraging the phenomenon of thermionic emission, or the release of electrons from a hot body—operating at around 900 K... Read more →

One of the main obstacles to the commercialization of high-energy density lithium-sulfur batteries is the tendency for lithium polysulfides—the lithium and sulfur reaction products—to dissolve in the battery’s electrolyte and travel to the opposite electrode permanently. This causes the battery’s capacity to decrease over its lifetime. To prevent this polysulfide... Read more →

Graphene nanoribbons formed into a three-dimensional aerogel and doped with boron and nitrogen (3D BNC NRs) exhibit the highest onset and half-wave potentials among the reported metal-free catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in alkaline fuel cells, and show superior performance compared to commercial Pt/C catalyst, according to a... Read more →

Researchers from Nanjing Forestry University and the University of Maryland have designed high-performance microfibers by hybridizing two-dimensional (2D) graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets and one-dimensional (1D) nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) fibers. The resulting well-aligned, strong microfibers have the potential to supersede carbon fibers due to their low cost, the team suggests in... Read more →

The large specific surface area (SSA)—i.e., the surface-to-mass ratio—of graphene, combined with its high electrical conductivity, high mechanical strength, ease of functionalization, and potential for mass production, makes it an extremely attractive platform for energy applications, such as a transparent conductive electrode for solar cells or as flexible high-capacity electrode... Read more →

This sheet of graphene contains an array of crown ethers that can strongly bind select guest ions or molecules. Image credit: ORNL. Click to enlarge. A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has discovered a way to increase significantly the selectivity and binding strength of... Read more →

Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK have found that monolayers of graphene—which, as a perfect monolayer is impermeable to all gases and liquids—and its sister material boron nitride (BN) are highly permeable to protons, especially at elevated temperatures and if the films are covered with catalytic nanoparticles... Read more →

Graphene 3D Lab Inc., which develops, manufactures, and markets proprietary graphene-based nanocomposite materials for various types of 3D printing, including fused filament fabrication, has developed a 3D printable graphene battery. CEO Daniel Stolyarov, presented the prototype 3D printable graphene battery at the Inside 3D Printing Conference in Santa Clara, CA... Read more →

Preparation procedure for the BN-GQD/G nanocomposite. Credit: ACS, Fei et al. Click to enlarge. A team at Rice University has created a hybrid material combining graphene quantum dots (GQDs) and graphene platelets that can—depending upon its formulation—outperform platinum as a catalyst for fuel cells. The material showed an oxygen reduction... Read more →

The University of Sunderland (UK), working with a consortium of five other research partners from Italy, Spain and Germany, has been selected for funding by the €1-billion (US$1.4-billion) Graphene Flagship research initiative in Europe (earlier post) for their iGCAuto proposal. The researchers will explore the properties of graphene to determine... Read more →

Adding calcium atoms (orange spheres) between graphene planes (blue honeycomb) creates a superconducting material called CaC6. A study at SLAC has shown for the first time that graphene is a key player in this superconductivity: Electrons scatter back and forth between the graphene and calcium layers, interact with natural vibrations... Read more →