A research team led by Profs. CHEN Wei and WEI Wei from the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed novel graphene/silicon carbide (SiC) catalysts for efficient CO2 photoelectroreduction to ethanol (C2H5OH). The results were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The composite catalyst,... Read more →

A team from the University of Calgary and Rice University has used flash joule heating (FJH) (earlier post) to convert low-value asphaltenes—a by-product of crude oil refining—into a high-value carbon allotrope, asphaltene-derived flash graphene (AFG). Flash graphene from asphaltenes. (A) Schematic conceptualization of sustainable valorization of asphaltene. (B) Photograph of... Read more →

NanoXplore Inc., a leading graphene company, announced that it was the winning bidder for a significant portion of the assets of XG Sciences Inc, a developer of silicon-graphene anode materials (earlier post), in a sale conducted by XG’s senior secured creditor pursuant to Article 9 of Michigan’s enactment of the... Read more →

UK-based graphene startup Anaphite closed a £4.1-million (US$4.8-million) seed round led by Elbow Beach Capital with a £1.5-million (US$1.8-million) investment and supported by Wealth Club, Blue Wire Capital, Oxford Investment Opportunity Network, Zero Carbon Capital, Silicon Roundabout Ventures and Deeptech Labs. Graphene, only discovered in 2004, is a unique material... Read more →

Researchers at UCLA, with colleagues at UC Irvine, have designed a graphene-nanopocket-encaged platinum cobalt (PtCo@Gnp) nanocatalyst for fuel cells with good electrochemical accessibility and exceptional durability under a demanding ultralow PGM loading (0.070 mgPGM cm–2) due to the non-contacting enclosure of graphene nanopockets. The PtCo@Gnp delivers a state-of-the-art mass activity... Read more →

Electric vehicle manufacturers are searching for a significant increase in energy density, an improvement of fast-charging capabilities, and a reduced cost for lithium-ion batteries. A graphene nanotube dispersion, developed by OCSiAl, allows for a substantial increase in key battery parameters and is now experiencing growing interest from Chinese battery manufacturers.... Read more →

Graphmatech, Graphenea, and Northvolt have succeeded in up-cycling end-of-life EV batteries into graphene oxide at industrial pilot scale. This breakthrough uses the material left after Northvolt has extracted valuable metals and minerals. Until now, that remaining material has been waste. The upcycling of graphene oxide from recycled batteries represents a... Read more →

Researchers at Texas A&M University and ExxonMobil are developing a method to reprocess petroleum coke—a byproduct of refining crude oil—into graphene, using a chemical process called electrochemical exfoliation. This open-access study was published in NPJ 2D Materials and Applications. Simplified schematic of refinery operations and products: there is a need... Read more →

OCSiAl, the world’s largest manufacturer of graphene nanotubes (earlier post), is launching a graphene nanotube synthesis facility near Belgrade, Serbia, in the first half of 2023. The synthesis facility will become the core of the graphene nanotube industrial hub and will be accompanied by production lines of nanotube concentrates for... Read more →

Rice University chemists working with researchers at the Ford Motor Company are turning plastic parts from end-of-life vehicles into graphene via the university’s flash Joule heating process (earlier post). The Rice lab of chemist James Tour introduced flash Joule heating in 2020 to convert coal, petroleum coke and trash into... Read more →

OCSiAl, the world’s largest manufacturer of graphene nanotubes, has been granted approval by Luxembourg authorities for a production plant, together with an associated R&D center, in Differdange, Luxembourg. OCSiAl’s graphene nanotube synthesis facility, expected to be the largest of its kind, is scheduled to begin production in 2025. The new... Read more →

Skeleton Technologies, a producer of supercapacitor and energy storage systems, closed its Round D3 with €37.6 million of equity investments. Total D round funding is now at €108 million; round D3 brings total investments into Skeleton to more than €200 million. Round D3 investments will be used to scale-up the... Read more →

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a nanometric graphite-like anode for sodium ion (Na+ storage), formed by stacked graphene sheets functionalized only on one side, termed Janus graphene. The estimated sodium storage up to C6.9Na is comparable to graphite for standard lithium ion batteries. The approach, reported... Read more →

Researchers at the University of Bath have developed a graphene oxide (GO)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) aerogel (GPA) weighing just 2.1 kg m-3—making it the lightest sound insulation ever manufactured. Over the 400–2500 Hz range, the reported average sound absorption coefficients are as high as 0.79, while the average sound transmission losses... Read more →

Rice University scientists and their colleagues at C-Crete Technologies have optimized a process to convert waste from rubber tires into graphene that can, in turn, be used to strengthen concrete. The research led by Rice chemist James Tour and Rouzbeh Shahsavari of C-Crete is detailed in the journal Carbon. Concrete... Read more →

Skeleton Technologies, the largest European manufacturer of ultracapacitors, and Marubeni Corporation, one of Japan’s largest conglomerates with more than €50 billion of annual revenue, signed a strategic cooperation agreement to support commercial scale-up and customer acquisition for Skeleton’s new generation of ultracapacitors—called the SuperBattery—in the Asian automotive sector. The technology... Read more →

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have increased the conductivity of copper wire by about 5%—a development that can increase motor efficiency. Higher conductivity also means that less copper is needed for the same efficiency, which can reduce the weight and volume of various components for EVs. Using a... Read more →

Skeleton Technologies, a global leader in graphene-based ultracapacitor energy storage, has partnered with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology to complete the development of the SuperBattery, a groundbreaking graphene battery with a 15-second charging time. This extra-fast charging time coupled with charging cycles counted in hundreds of thousands make the SuperBattery... Read more →

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL) have produced graphene via a special, scalable technique and used it to develop hydrogen fuel cell catalysts. In an open-access paper published in the RSC journal Nanoscale, the researchers report that this new type of graphene-based catalyst was... Read more →

A team of Brown University researchers has used reduced graphene oxide (rGO) to enhance the toughness of an oxide-based solid-state lithium-ion conductor. In an open-access paper in the journal Matter, they report demonstrating materials with a greater than 2-fold enhancement in the average fracture toughness (KIC). To our knowledge, this... Read more →

Researchers at Aalto University (Finland), with colleagues at the University of Vienna (Austria), CNRS (France) and Nikolaev Institute of Inorganic Chemistry (Russia), have developed a highly graphitized graphene nanoflake (GF)–carbon nanotube (CNT) hybrid catalyst doped simultaneously with single atoms of N, Co, and Mo (N-Co-Mo-GF/CNT). This high surface area material... Read more →

A team at the University of Manchester (UK) has developed a doped graphene cathode for highly stable lithium-sulfur batteries. In an open access paper in the Nature journal Communications Chemistry, they report 100% charge capacity of Li-S batteries using the cathode material with 500 charge/discharge cycles at 0.5 C, 1... Read more →

Graphene Flagship partners the University of Bologna, Politecnico di Milano, CNR, NEST, Italcementi HeidelbergCement Group, the Israel Institute of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, and the University of Cambridge have developed a graphene-titania photocatalyst that degrades up to 70% more atmospheric nitrogen oxides (NOx) than standard titania nanoparticles in tests... Read more →

Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and George Washington University in the US report in a new paper in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research that a range of important carbon nanomaterials can be produced at high yield by molten carbonate electrolysis. In the Solar... Read more →

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 →