‘Super Material’ Graphene Continues To Amaze

[Horn]

Extraordinary stories about graphene crop up with serious regularity, which is perhaps no surprise when you consider the rather unusual method employed to discover it. In 2004, Professor Sir Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov managed to isolate graphene flakes, by employing a low tech method completely at odds with the incredibly hi-tech possibilities of the material – using simple adhesive tape to strip it from graphite.

The pair won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their pioneering work, but the story doesn’t end there – far from it. In fact, graphene, which is in essence, a single ‘sheet’ of graphite, has been found to be a material of such impressive qualities that it could be classed as the strutting peacock of the sub-atomic world. A quick look at the graphene CV reveals:

* it is thin – very thin. It would take three million sheets of it to make a one millimetre thick sheet of graphite.
* It is virtually invisible
* electricity flows through it faster than any other material.
* it is the best conductor of heat on the planet
* it is 200 times stronger than steel and several times tougher than diamond
* it is highly flexible and can be stretched like rubber.
* its uses are incredibly varied and major companies and government agencies are falling over themselves to patent new devices and technologies - researchers at Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University, in Korea, recently developed a 63-centimeter-wide flexible touch-screen from the material and George Osbourne recently promised a £50 million investment to create a UK graphene research hub.

That’s what we know already, but last week, Geim and his University of Manchester team published some more interesting research results. They found graphene to be impermeable by any liquid or gas, including the notoriously difficult to trap helium, but then they discovered an even bigger graphene surprise; membranes of graphene oxide allowed ‘unimpeded permeation of water’.

The discovery led to the team trying to do something a little different. “Just for a laugh, we sealed a bottle of vodka with our membranes and found that the distilled solution became stronger and stronger with time. Neither of us drinks vodka but it was great fun to do the experiment”, said Dr Rahul Nair to the Press Association , who headed up the experimental study. You can check the research in full here.

Alcohol distillation aside, the researchers aren’t really sure of where this new feature of graphene could lead to at the moment. However, Professor Sir Gein’s comment on the discovery is more than intriguing; ‘the properties are so unusual that it is hard to imagine that they cannot find some use in the design of filtration, separation or barrier membranes and for selective removal of water.’

Graphene’s ability to clear oil from water has already been documented, but if you can imagine, without the constraints of current technology, the potential of filtering sea water or dirty water to fresh or clean water, for example, then this could be yet another incredibly important property of this truly amazing material…

http://www.reviewexplorer.com/news/9...nues-to-amaze/

The pencil is mightier than the sword.

[mamboni]

Hmm, could replace silver in many of it's industrial uses.

Mixed emotions....

[monty]

Graphene may be a danger to humans and the evironment ~ April 2014

newatlas.com
Wonder-material graphene could be dangerous to humans and the environment


Wonder-material graphene could be dangerous to humans and the environment

By Loz Blain
6-7 minutes

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I've been waiting for some time now to write a headline along the lines of "scientists discover thing that graphene is not amazing at" ... and here it is. Everybody’s favorite nanomaterial may have a plethora of near-magical properties, but as it turns out, it could also be bad for the environment – and bad for you, too.

It’s easy to get carried away when you start talking about graphene. Comprised of single atom thick layers of carbon, graphene is incredibly light, incredibly strong, extremely flexible and highly conductive both of heat and electricity. Its properties hold the promise of outright technological revolution in so many fields that it has been called a wonder material.

But it’s only been 10 years since graphene was first isolated in the laboratory, and as researchers and industries scramble to bring graphene out of the lab and into a vast range of commercial applications, far less money is being spent examining its potential negative effects.

Two recent studies give us a less than rosy angle. In the first, a team of biologists, engineers and material scientists at Brown University examined graphene’s potential toxicity in human cells. They found that the jagged edges of graphene nanoparticles, super sharp and super strong, easily pierced through cell membranes in human lung, skin and immune cells, suggesting the potential to do serious damage in humans and other animals.


-The bottom corner of a piece of graphene penetrates a cell membrane -
The mechanical properties like rough edges and sharp corners can make graphene dangerous to human cells. Scale bar represents two microns. (Image: Kane lab/Brown University)

"These materials can be inhaled unintentionally, or they may be intentionally injected or implanted as components of new biomedical technologies," said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering and one of the study’s authors. "So we want to understand how they interact with cells once inside the body."

Another study by a team from University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering examined how graphene oxide nanoparticles might interact with the environment if they found their way into surface or ground water sources.

The team found that in groundwater sources, where there’s little organic material and the water has a higher degree of hardness, graphene oxide nanoparticles tended to become less stable and would eventually settle out or be removed in sub-surface environments.

Jacob D Lanphere, left, and Corey Luth, work in the lab of their adviser Sharon Walker

But in surface water such as lakes or rivers, where there’s more organic material and less hardness, the particles stayed much more stable and showed a tendency to travel further, particularly under the surface.

So a spill of these kinds of nanoparticles would appear to have the potential to cause harm to organic matter, plants, fish, animals, and humans. The affected area could be quick to spread, and could take some time to become safe again.

"The situation today is similar to where we were with chemicals and pharmaceuticals 30 years ago," said the paper’s co-author Jacob D. Lanphere. "We just don’t know much about what happens when these engineered nanomaterials get into the ground or water. So we have to be proactive so we have the data available to promote sustainable applications of this technology in the future."

At this stage, the Material Safety Data Sheet governing the industrial use of graphene is incomplete. It’s listed as a potential irritant of skin and eyes, and potentially hazardous to breathe in or ingest. No information is available on whether it has carcinogenic effects or potential developmental toxicity.

But researchers from the first study point out that this is a material in its infancy, and as a man-made material, there are opportunities at this early stage to examine and understand the potential harmful properties of graphene and try to engineer them out. We’ve got a few years yet before graphene really starts being a big presence in our lives, so the challenge is set to work out how to make it as safe as possible for ourselves and our planet.

The Brown University research was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The UC Riverside paper was published in a special issue of the journal Environmental Engineering Science.

Sources: Brown University, UC Riverside

[monty]

Liquid graphene that may be environmentally friendly ~ August 2019


grapheneindustry.org.au Liquid Graphene is Safer - Australian Graphene Industry Association

2-3 minutes

---

Liquid graphene made by Carbon Waters is safe to use in industry and environmentally friendly. Everything is done in water, in active solutions which also prevent risks associated with organic powders.

“A French start-up has developed a high-quality liquid graphene that can be used in material resistance, thermal management and metal substitution. Unlike graphene oxide dispersion, Carbon Waters’ graphene is 100% pure and stable and it is safe to use in industrial and research settings. Plus it is environmentally friendly.


Graphene is an extremely thin carbon sheet which performs in a unique way in many areas. Layers of graphene are stacked together in order to form graphite, the most common form of carbon material. Graphene is the thinnest known compound and exhibits incredible properties.



Innovation Origins talked with Alban Chesneau, one of Carbon Waters founders.


Carbon Waters is a young chemical company specialised in graphene production but also in the development of additives and coating which use graphene. The thing that is very particular about the way we produce graphene, is that we don’t use powder at all. Basically, we produce graphene from graphite and everything is done in a liquid form. Subsequently, this means that there is no risk concerning nanoparticles or nano-powders.


This is something that is really novel – not using any oxide dispersion in the production of graphene. Everything is done in water, in active solutions which also prevent risks associated with organic powders. We have achieved a very stable solution of graphene in liquid, something that is absolutely very hard to accomplish, a lot of companies are working on this.


One characteristic of Carbon Waters is the development of toxic-free products. Right now, a lot of coatings use contact residual materials and there are risks involved in using them. What we do, and what we really want to keep doing in Carbon Waters, is to use graphene so as to replace these materials. Develop a product that is problem-free and much more environmentally friendly”.

Read full article Start-up of the day: fashioning graphene out of food waste



Source: Innovation Origins


Read more graphene news over here.

[dys]

I have heard that NAC can detoxify Graphene from the body. (NOT once someone has taken the kill shot, though)https://anh-usa.org/why-the-fda-is-a...c-supplements/

[monty]

This is just on page of the investigation that LA QUINTA COLUMNA has posted on their Telegram channel

La Quinta Columna TV
Algunos de los artículos de la literatura científica consultada al respecto de la investigación de LQC 
Some of the articles of the scientific literature consulted in respect to the investigation by La Quinta Columna

++1)Computing and Communications for the Software-Defined Metamaterial Paradigm: A Context Analysis
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2693267

++2)Controlled Information Transfer Through An In Vivo Nervous System
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-20725-2

3) Terahertz Channel Characterization Inside the Human Skin for Nano-Scale Body-Centric Networks
https://doi.org/10.1109/TTHZ.2016.2542213

4) Blood–brain barrier structure and function and the challenges for CNS drug delivery
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10545-013-9608-0

++5) Engineering molecular communications integrated with carbon nanotubes in neural sensor nanonetworks
https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-nbt.2016.0150

++ 6) Design and parametric simulation of triangle nano-particle structures for the visible and near-infrared frequencies
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-019-1260-3

7) Amplify-and-Forward Relaying in Two-Hop Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication Networks
https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOCOM.2015.7417069

8) Analysis and Design of Multi-Hop Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication Networks
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2015.2501741

++ 9) NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ALVEOLAR SPACES AND HUMAN TISSUES FOR NANOSCALE BODY-CENTRIC WIRELESS NETWORKS
https://doi.org/10.17482/uumfd.539155

10) Nanonetworks: A new communication paradigm. Computer Networks, 52(12), pp. 2260-2279
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2008.04.001

11) Electromagnetic wireless nanosensor networks
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nancom.2010.04.001

12) Propagation models for nanocommunication networks
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5505714

++13) Activation of Microwave Fields in a Spin-Torque Nano-Oscillator by Neuronal Action Potentials
https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05630

14) Intelligence and security in big 5G-oriented IoNT: An overview
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2019.08.009

15) Recent Advances in Wearable Transdermal Delivery Systems
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201704530

16) Study of terahertz-radiation-induced DNA damage in human blood leukocytes
https://doi.org/10.1070/QE2014v044n03ABEH015337

17) Capacity analysis of a diffusion-based short-range molecular nano-communication channel
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2010.12.024

18) Carbon nanotube-reinforced intermetallic matrix composites: processing challenges, consolidation, and mechanical properties
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-019-04095-1

++ 19) Insight into the Mechanism of Graphene Oxide Degradation via the Photo-Fenton Reaction
https://doi.org/10.1021/jp503413s

20) Development of artificial neuronal networks for molecular communication
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nancom.2011.05.004

++21) Routing Protocols for Wireless Nanosensor Networks and Internet of Nano Things: A Comprehensive Survey
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3035646

++ 22) Imaging striatal dopamine release using a nongenetically encoded near infrared fluorescent catecholamine nanosensor
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw3108

23) Tunable microwave frequency via heterogeneous tilted polarizer based spin torque nano oscillator
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0052737

++ 24) Teslaphoresis of Carbon Nanotubes
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.6b02313

25) Multi-walled carbon nanotubes induce T lymphocyte apoptosis
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2005.06.020

26) EECORONA: Energy Efficiency Coordinate and Routing System for Nanonetworks
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58861-8_2

27) DCCORONA: Distributed Cluster-based Coordinate and Routing System for Nanonetworks
https://doi.org/10.1109/UEMCON51285.2020.9298084

28) An in vitro study of the potential of carbon nanotubes and nanofibres to induce inflammatory mediators and frustrated phagocytosis
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2007.05.011

29) Coatings of Different Carbon Nanotubes on Platinum Electrodes for Neuronal Devices: Preparation, Cytocompatibility and Interaction with Spiral Ganglion Cells
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158571.g002

30) Modeling the Dynamic Processing of the Presynaptic Terminals for