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IAMOND-HARD ARMOR The media tends to depict bullet-proof armor as something that’s thick and heavier than regular clothes. Despite being for bodily protection, the added bulk of that armor might restrict a person’s movements. But scientists at the City University of New York’s Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) have found that diamond-hard armor doesn’t need to be thick. The key to less-bulky protection is graphene, a tightly-packed layer of bonded carbon atoms one million times thinner than a piece of paper. The researchers discovered that two layers of graphene stacked on top of one another can temporarily become as hard...

Running shoes and graphene were made for each other. One is always in search of the latest gimmick and the other has produced some of the most stunning in recent memory. The University of Manchester, long a leading force in research surrounding the one-atom-thick material, has teamed up with British sportswear brand inov-8 to bring graphene to footwear. Unlike most of the research we’ve seen around science’s recent favorite miracle material, these things are headed to the market in our lifetimes — a seeming miracle in and of itself. In fact, they’re due out next year, priced at a steep,...

A wonder material as flexible as tinfoil but hard enough to stop a speeding bullet has been created in the lab. Diamene is made using two layers of graphene, the world's first two-dimensional material which is just one atom thick, a million times thinner than human hair. Such a substance could be used for anything from water-resistant protective coatings to ultra-light bulletproof armour.

Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become "conflict minerals" which can promote conflicts and oppression. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene. They can be found in your computer, in your mobile phone, in almost all other electronic equipment and in many of the plastics around you. Society is highly dependent on scarce metals, and this...

Electrons have been caught flowing through graphene like a liquid, reaching limits physicists thought were fundamentally impossible. This type of conductance is known as 'superballistic' flow, and this new experiment suggests it could revolutionise the way we conduct electricity. If that's not crazy enough, the super-fast flows actually occur as a result of electrons bouncing off each other, something that high school physics tells us should slow conductivity down.

NEW YORK, July 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The introduction of nanotechnology in the cement industry has a lot of benefits, some of which include reduced emission, improved crack resistance, reduced water absorption, improved strength and ductility. NanoGraphene Inc. is putting construction industries at the forefront of graphene concrete application with its high quality, environmentally clean and waterless graphene. Graphene is a thin layer of pure carbon derived from graphite. It is a unique material which has a wide array of applications and possesses some distinct properties. It is strong, flexible and a good conductor of electricity, hence widely used in...

Terahertz technology enabled via graphene could boost the capacity of future data networks, according to researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Andrei Vorobiev, pictured, senior researcher, said: “One of graphene’s special features is that electrons move much faster than in most semiconductors used today. Thanks to this, we can access the high frequencies that constitute the terahertz range. Data communication then has the potential of becoming up to ten times faster and can transmit much larger amounts of data than is currently possible.” Researchers at Chalmers have shown that graphene based transistor devices could receive and convert terahertz...

Nanotechnologists from Rice University and China's Tianjin University have used 3-D laser printing to fabricate centimeter-sized objects of atomically thin graphene. The research could yield industrially useful quantities of bulk graphene and is described online in a new study in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. "This study is a first of its kind," said Rice chemist James Tour, co-corresponding author of the paper. "We have shown how to make 3-D graphene foams from nongraphene starting materials, and the method lends itself to being scaled to graphene foams for additive manufacturing applications with pore-size control." Graphene, one of the...

As reported recently in the journal Nature Communications, a team of researchers from the University of Central Florida (UCF), CREOL and the University of Texas have developed a graphene-based transistor that could one day lead to super-fast and super energy-efficient computers. By super-fast we mean a thousand times faster and by super energy-efficient we mean it will only use a hundredth of the power. Right now, the world of electronics relies on silicon-based transistors to power its devices. And while their invention made it possible for devices to be reduced to smaller sizes as the transistors allowed the flow of...

University of Illinois at Chicago scientists have discovered a new chemical method that enables graphene to be incorporated into a wide range of applications while maintaining its ultra-fast electronics. Graphene, a lightweight, thin, flexible material, can be used to enhance the strength and speed of computer display screens, electric/photonics circuits, solar cells and various medical, chemical and industrial processes, among other things. It is comprised of a single layer of carbon atoms bonded together in a repeating pattern of hexagons. Isolated for the first time 15 years ago by a physics professor at the University of Manchester in England, it...

Enhanced single-walled carbon nanotubes offer a more effective and sustainable approach to water treatment and remediation than the standard industry materials—silicon gels and activated carbon—according to a paper published in the March issue of Environmental Science Water: Research and Technology. RIT researchers John-David Rocha and Reginald Rogers, authors of the study, demonstrate the potential of this emerging technology to clean polluted water. Their work applies carbon nanotubes to environmental problems in a specific new way that builds on a nearly two decades of nanomaterial research. Nanotubes are more commonly associated with fuel-cell research. “This aspect is new—taking knowledge of carbon...

Anyone who has a portable device — including smartphones, tablets, laptops, smartwatches and fitness trackers — is obviously familiar with a lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery because most (if not all) of these devices are powered by this kind of battery. We’ve been okay with the rechargeable for a while, but as lithium-ion batteries are now close to reaching their maximum storage capacity (in other words, battery life can’t be extended any more), and with the horror stories about phone batteries that explode or burn, the search is on for an alternative battery that can meet our demands better and safer. So...

University of Cambridge scientists, in conjunction with tech industry experts, have developed a novel graphene-based infrared (IR) detector with record high sensitivity for thermal detection. The technology paves the way for high-performance IR imaging and spectroscopy. The work was undertaken as part of a collaboration within the Graphene Flagship – the European research consortium aiming to bring graphene technologies to commercial markets within ten years. Collaborators included the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona and the University of Ioannina in Greece, as well as Nokia UK and Emberion, who are local industrial partners of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. Published in...

Researchers have successfully used graphene to reinvent abandoned heat energy converter technology and to make it more efficient. This will be used to boost the output from older power stations. Power station efficiency has been substantially increased by utilizing satellite-powering technology that was abandoned many years ago. The technology has been reconfigured to function with traditional power stations to aid the conversion of heat to electricity (what’s called thermionic energy conversion) more efficiently. In better news for the environment, this means lower amounts of fossil fuel will be needed to be burnt to produce equivalent amounts of power. Much of...

It seems that on a monthly basis, there is a new development in the speed and quality of graphene production, be it with copper substrates, or using it to create the strongest material known to humankind. Yet despite these regular developments, little progress has been made in producing the so-called wonder material faster and cheaper to the point that it can be mass-produced. However, the latest development from Kansas State University (KSU) is certainly taking graphene to a new, explosive level of development. Unlike current production methods that rely on large industrial-scale equipment, the KSU team led by Prof Chris...

Once again, graphene has proven itself to be a rather special material: an international research team led by Professor Fritz Aumayr from the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Wien was able to demonstrate that the electrons in graphene are extremely mobile and react very quickly. Impacting xenon ions with a particularly high electric charge on a graphene film causes a large number of electrons to be torn away from the graphene in a very precise spot. However, the material was able to replace the electrons within some femtoseconds. This resulted in extremely high currents, which would not be maintained...

Through studying the geometry of strong structures, MIT researchers are now one step closer to 3D printing graphene. By comparison, 2D graphene is better at conducting electricity than copper wires, ten times stronger than steel, and lighter and certainly more transparent than both of them. The problem is that these properties as are all theoretical and scaling the nanomaterial has proved challenging. Furthermore, in order to compete with copper and steel, graphene has to be 3D. 3D graphene – here’s the deal The challenges of making a 3D structure out of a 2D material is that the material’s atomic structure,...

Researchers at Penn State, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company have developed methods to control defects in two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, that may lead to improved membranes for water desalination, energy storage, sensing or advanced protective coatings. For a two-dimensional, one-atom-thick material like graphene, defects such as small cracks or holes can make a big difference in performance. Usually, these defects are considered undesirable. But if the defects can be controlled, they can be used to engineer new, desirable properties into the material. "As long as you can control defects, you...

High-quality graphene would soon be used for the next generation of electronics and energy devices. To produce it a simple method has been done. This method involves only using a microwave oven in order to bake the compound. Researchers at Rutgers' School of Engineering in Rutgers University have found that high-quality graphene could be produced using simple methods. That could potentially mean millions of dollars saved in making the new compound that would be used for new electronic devices. The discovery has been made by students, most of whom are either undergraduates or are post-doctoral associates, as Phys Org reports....

Among Manchester’s proudest scientific developments has to be graphene - it’s very own homegrown wonder material first isolated by scientists at the University of Manchester back in 2004. A material made from a single atom layer of carbon that is super lightweight, super conductive and super strong, it seems to have endless capabilities in the modern world - from smart clothing to intergalactic exploration. Twelve years after its discovery via a sticky tape dispenser - and six years since its developers Andre Geim (pictured below) and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics - and interest in graphene...