A team of Italian researchers from the European consortium Graphene Flagship has discovered that graphene nano-tools can trigger bone formation in a mouse experiment. They hope the discovery will someday have a clinical application.

It is a two-dimensional material that has promised almost magical applications. Almost ten years after its ‘parents’ won a Nobel Prize, its most mundane applications are coming to market. Although the products are not revolutionary, many companies that use graphene do so with a secrecy that stands out against the marketing of others.

The 'Brains on Board' project is a collaboration between several British universities that partners with the HBP and seeks to ‘translate’ the brains of ants and bees into algorithms that a machine will understand. Its aim is to create equally efficient robots that can be used for rescue, space exploration and terrain analysis.

Water molecules distort the electrical resistance of graphene, but now a team of European researchers has discovered that when this two-dimensional material is integrated with the metal of a circuit, contact resistance is not impaired by humidity. This finding will help to develop new sensors –the interface between circuits and the real world– with a significant cost reduction.

Researchers from IMDEA Nanociencia and other European centres have discovered that the combination of graphene with cobalt offers very relevant properties in the field of magnetism. This breakthrough sets the stage for the development of new logic devices that can store large data amounts quickly and with reduced energy consumption.

The extraordinary mechanical and electronic properties of graphene endow this material with features suitable for a multitude of potential applications. They can be even more extended by covalent graphene functionalization but graphene presents a challenge: low reactivity. One of the solutions is to manufacture graphene derivatives from fluorographene, which, with new solvents and techniques for eliminating or replacing its fluorine atoms, can produce graphene equipped with new functionalities.

More than 600 experts from 43 countries have gathered in San Sebastian this week to exchange ideas and share their work on this substance. Their ultimate goal: to take this material out of the laboratory to make the promised revolution a reality. This is the Graphene Week, which this year has received the visit of the ‘father’ of graphene, Andre Geim.

The many applications of graphene nanomaterials also include those in the field of medicine, from cancer therapies to tissue engineering and gene transfer. The main barrier that tools manufactured with these materials will have to overcome is the reaction of the immune system. Now European researchers have analyzed how our defences act in the presence of graphene oxide, the oxidised form of graphene.

Graphene has extraordinary mechanical and electronic properties, but no magnetic properties. This can be made up for with the help of the lightest element: hydrogen, which transfers its magnetic moment on coming into contact with graphene. This has been demonstrated by a team of European scientists coordinated by the physicist Iván Brihuega from the Autonomous University of Madrid.