A round up of all the latest Nanotech product, investment, business and regulatory developments from December-January. Most content is industry related with additional information on interesting research. This section is updated Daily/Weekly.
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QUANTUM DOTS
Quantum dot solar cells
Researchers at Los Alamos National Lab. are creating double-pane solar windows that generate electricity with greater efficiency and also create shading and insulation. It’s all made possible by a new window architecture which utilizes two different layers of low-cost quantum dots tuned to absorb different parts of the solar spectrum. The approach complements existing photovoltaic technology by adding high-efficiency sunlight collectors to existing solar panels or integrating the. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-017-0070-7
GRAPHENE
Australian government funding multi-million dollar graphene battery project
Swinburne researchers have secured $3.45 million in funding to continue work on a project investigating energy storage alternatives using graphene oxide. Researchers will receive the grant as part of the Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) funds commissioned by the Australian Government. The Swinburne Centre for Micro-Photonics is collaborating with Flinders University as well as industry leaders First Graphene Ltd and Kremford Pty Ltd.
Swedish energy storage company enters into agreement with graphene producer
SaltX Technology has signed an agreement with graphene company to manufacture graphene. By using graphene, SaltX has been able to demonstrate that the heat conductivity, and thereby the performance, in the SaltX material can be increased by up to five times. The collaboration project starts immediately and is expected to deliver the first batches of graphene material already next year.
Wearable graphene sensors for plants
Iowa State University researchers have developed a graphene sensor that can be taped to plants. Researchers describe the various sensors and the “simple and versatile method for patterning and transferring graphene-based nanomaterials” to create the flexible sensors in a paper featured on the cover of the December 2017 issue of the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.
The research has been primarily supported by the Faculty Scholars Program of Iowa State’s Plant Sciences Institute.
Iowa State University researchers have developed these “plant tattoo sensors” to take real-time, direct measurements of water use in crops. Larger photo. Photo courtesy of Liang Dong.
Partnership to develop graphene solar cells
Cleantech company Verditek Plc and graphene technology firm Paragraf Ltd have agreed to partner in the development of graphene-based solar cells and modules. A Joint Development Programme (JDR) will investigate, develop and verify the use of graphene in the making of high-performance solar products. As part of it, Paragraf’s proprietary graphene manufacturing process will be combined with Verditek solar technology.
“The synergy of Verditek market disrupting solar cell design with Paragraf’s revolutionary materials has the potential to dramatically advance today’s solar energy generation capabilities, providing a potentially market defining opportunity for the partnership,” said Simon Thomas, CEO of Paragraf. The company uses technology developed at the University of Cambridge for the highly reproducible, large-scale production of two-dimensional materials, such as graphene.
Verditek noted that it has secured terms for the delivery of final pieces of manufacturing equipment to the new facility in San Marino, Italy of its 51%-owned subsidiary Greenflex Energy Ltd. The plant will produce lightweight flexible solar panels, for projects where performance and design are equally important.
US Patent Granted to Grolltex for Advanced Graphene ‘Super’ Sensor
San Diego based Grolltex was granted a patent by the USPTO for a new multi-modal ‘super’ sensor design made of single layer graphene. The patent, titled “Graphene-based multi-modal sensor” describes a one atom thick architecture and utilizes several of Grolltex’ 2D materials technologies to produce what the company internally calls ‘The smallest, most sensitive sensor in the world’. The company is working on initial applications for these sensors that are targeting the bio-sensing and defense fields as leading-edge users of this technology.
CARBON NANOTUBES
Funding for process that converts natural gas to hydrogen, carbon fiber, and carbon nanotubes
Southern California Gas Co. is partnering with a development team to advance a new process that converts natural gas to hydrogen, carbon fiber, and carbon nanotubes. The low-emission process, selected for funding by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO) within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), will create both hydrogen that can be used in fuel cell vehicles and industrial processes, as well as carbon fiber used in applications from medical devices and aerospace structures to building products. The goal of the partnership, led by C4-MCP, LLC (C4), a Santa Monica-based technology start-up, is to offset the hydrogen production expense with the sales of the carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes, reducing the hydrogen’s net cost to under $2 per kilogram, thus helping make hydrogen fueled cars and trucks cost-competitive with conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles. In addition, this technology will virtually eliminate CO2 emissions from the methane-to-hydrogen process. These efforts support FCTO’s focus on early stage research and development to enable innovations to be demonstrated and to help guide further early stage research strategy.
Fujitsu Laboratories announced has developed a process to manufacture sheets of pure carbon, multi-walled perpendicular nanotubes (CNTs). The uniformly arrayed tubes are aligned in the direction of heat removal so that they can be used as heat sinks for a number of electronic applications including silicon carbide devices employed in electric vehicles and in high-performance computing.
Image: Fujitsu Laboratories
