Substrate defects key to growth of 2D materials

14-May-2019 - Creating two-dimentional materials large enough to use in electronics is a challenge despite huge effort but now, Penn State researchers have discovered a method for improving the quality of one class of 2D materials, with potential to achieve wafer-scale growth in the future. The field of 2D ...

Nanotube 'rebar' makes graphene twice as tough

Material shows promise for flexible electronics

08-Aug-2018 - Rice University researchers have found that fracture-resistant "rebar graphene" is more than twice as tough as pristine graphene. Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon. On the two-dimensional scale, the material is stronger than steel, but because graphene is so thin, it is still subject ...

The fine-tuning of two-dimensional materials

02-Mar-2018 - A new understanding of why synthetic 2-D materials often perform orders of magnitude worse than predicted was reached by teams of researchers led by Penn State. They searched for ways to improve these materials' performance in future electronics, photonics, and memory storage ...

Four elements make 2-D optical platform

27-Sep-2017 - Rice University scientists have discovered a two-dimensional alloy with an optical bandgap that can be tuned by the temperature used to grow it. The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan grew the four-component alloy of transition metals molybdenum and tungsten with chalcogens sulfur ...

Improving solar cell technology using new materials and nanowires

31-Jul-2017 - Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology are expanding solar cell technology using nanowires to capture more of the sun's energy and transform it into usable electricity. Comparable to ultra-thin blades of grass, nanowires added to today's conventional materials are capable of capturing ...

Triple-layer catalyst does double duty

28-Jul-2017 - Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen to produce clean energy can be simplified with a single catalyst developed by scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston. The electrolytic film produced at Rice and tested at Houston is a three-layer structure of nickel, graphene and a ...

Cotton candy made of graphene

Ingredients: Sucrose and lasers

11-Jul-2017 - 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 in a new study. "This study is a first of ...

Using 3-D laser printing to print graphene foam

22-Jun-2017 - 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 in a new study. "This study is a first of ...

Gas gives laser-induced graphene super properties

18-May-2017 - Rice University scientists who invented laser-induced graphene (LIG) for applications like supercapacitors have now figured out a way to make the spongy graphene either superhydrophobic or superhydrophilic. And it's a gas. Until recently, the Rice lab of James Tour made LIG only in open air, ...

'Fuzzy' fibers can take rockets' heat

04-Apr-2017 - To stand up to the heat and pressure of next-generation rocket engines, the composite fibers used to make them should be fuzzy. The Rice University laboratory of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, in collaboration with NASA, has developed "fuzzy fibers" of silicon carbide that act like Velcro ...