Graphene - Page 7

I'm happy to announce my new book that I released today, The Graphene Handbook. Graphene is an exciting 2D carbon material - it is the world's strongest and most conductive material, and it's also transparent and flexible. Graphene may play an important role in the display industry, and it is also useful to make medical devices, electronics, spintronics, sensors, and more.

While graphene is exciting, there are many challenges still. The Graphene Handbook takes a look at the technology, industry and current market for graphene materials. It's a great way to be introduced to the material of the future. It took me about a year to write this book, and I hope it is the best introduction to graphene you can read today!

Reading this book, you'll learn all about:

• The properties of graphene
• Different production methods
• Possible graphene applications
• The latest graphene research
• The current market for graphene materials and products
• The main graphene challenges
• Other promising 2D materials

The book also provides:

• A history of graphene developments
• A graphene investment guide
• A comprehensive list of graphene companies
• A guide to other carbon allotropes

The Graphene Handbook costs $97 for the digital (PDF) edition or $149.99 for the printed edition. We also offer site and enterprise licenses, and academic discounts. If you're interested, click here for more information (including a table of contents).

The EU launched a new project called GLADIATOR (Graphene Layers: Production, Characterization and Integration) that aims to improve the quality and size of CVD graphene sheets and reduce the production cost. They will demonstrate this new graphene by producing large area flexible OLEDs.

GLADIATOR directly targets the transparent electrodes market and will demonstrate that ITO can be matched on performance (over 90% transparency and a resistance of less than 10 W/sq) and cost (under 30 €/m²).

A few weeks ago we launched the OLED Patent Newsletter, and so far responses have been very positive. This is a subscription-based services that manually tracks OLED patents from around the world and is an essential tool if you're involved with OLED patents and IP. We have subscribers from both the academia and from enterprises.

Today our sister-site Graphene-Info launched a similar service to track graphene patents. Graphene is an amazing carbon-based materials that is set to revolutionize entire industries - from electronics to water desalination, genomics and aerospace. Graphene may enable new touch panels and even display backplanes and it's a topic that all display professionals should keep track on.

Graphene is just emerging and companies and universities are rushing to patent new production processes, new derived materials and of course possible applications - so this is the perfect time to monitor this fledgling industry. As with the OLED newsletter, we offer 2-weeks free trial and a 34% discount if you subscribe within one month from today.

Cambridge University's Graphene Centre and Plastic Logic have signed a research collaboration agreement on graphene in flexible plastic electronics. This strategic agreement has several activities and goals, one of them is to develop graphene as a transparent, highly conductive layer for plastic backplanes for unbreakable LCD and flexible OLED displays.

Flexible E Ink panel by plastic logic

The two other research goals are to develop new transistor structures that use graphene-like materials as the active layer and to exploit the commercialization of graphene for flexible electronics.

Indium-Tin-Oxide (ITO) is currently used in OLED panels for the transparent cathode (or anode in top-emission OLEDs). ITO is useful because it is conductive and transparent, but its supply is limited (even though companies are now harvesting ITO from recycled electronics devices) and it's also brittle (so it's not suitable for flexible panels) and so companies are looking for alternatives.

Some products that use Cambrios Ag-Wires

One possible alternative are silver wires (or ag-wire). This technology is pioneered by Cambrios - a company established in 2002 with an aim to commercialize Ag-Wire based products. Cambrios ClearOhm is a Ag-Wire coating material used to create transparent conductive layers. ClearOhm can be deposited on thin films using a roll-to-roll (R2R) process, and is compatible with plastic substrates. It's also possible to use a sheet process on glass or plastic. Cambrios has filed over 175 patents for this technology and they claim they hold basic ag-wire patents. My friend Sri Peruvemba recently joined the company to become its chief marketing officer and he was kind enough to discuss their technology with me and help me with this article.

Apple filed a new patent that describes a fascinating elastic haptics display. The idea is that the screen can not only provide tactile feedback (using vibration, etc.) but change its shape to form real 3D buttons, markings and even maps. Pretty cool.

In order to create such a display, Apple needs a flexible panel - and indeed they specifically mention a flexible OLED panel in the patent. Apple does say that any suitable flexible display panel can be used, for example graphene based display. But it seems that OLED is the most mature technology when it comes to such flexible displays.

Researchers from the UK's University of Exeter discovered a new graphene based material that can be used as an ITO replacement. The so-called GraphExeter is a lightweight, flexible and transparent conductor which is more flexible than ITO and will hopefully be cheaper.

GraphExeter is made by compressed ferric chloride molecules between two sheets of graphene. The researcher are also working on a spray-on version of the material. This is not the first graphene based ITO replacement material. Back in August Rice University researchers unveiled a hybrid metal-graphene electrode which can also relace ITO.

Researchers from Rice University created thin hybrid metal-graphene electrodes - that outperform ITO electrodes, are also more transparent and less resistance to electric current. This can be useful for transparent and flexible OLED displays or lighting panels.

The new electrode is a thin film of single-layer graphene and a fine grid of metal nanowire. It's basically a hybrid-graphene electrode. The metal is used to enhance the conductivity at the required transparency. The metal grid strengthens the graphene, and the graphene fills all the empty spaces between the grid. The researchers found a grid of five-micron nanowires made of inexpensive, lightweight aluminum did not detract from the material's transparency.

Scientists from the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, India developed graphene based quantum dots (GQDs) blended with organic polymers. The new GQDs do not use any toxic metals such cadmium and lead used in today's quantum dots. The new devices actually perform better - less current loss and improved efficiency.

The researchers say that these GQDs may be used in organic solar cells and OLED displays - and indeed they fabricated a prototype OLED display with "good performance". Their work could lead to light-weight, flexible and cheap panels - used in large-area roll-to-roll manufacturing. The efficiency of the fabricated device is still low, and the researchers are working towards increased efficiency.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a new Graphene-based technology that can be used to create OLED displays. Originally they used the new technology to create flexible rechargeable batteries. 

It's not clear from the original article how can this be used exactly to enhance OLEDs...