New Device to Control the Functionality of Graphene Based Materials
Nature Communications has highlighted an article led by Josep Puigmartí’s team, from the Chemistry Faculty and the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (IQTC) of the University of Barcelona (UB), about a new device to control the functionality of graphene based materials.
Graphene has multiple technologically relevant properties but, until now, the techniques to determine its functionality in a controlled way and to know important factors, like the molecular density in a layer, the number of molecular layers and the morphology of the final material, have not had any success.
The UB team has developed a microfluidic device that will allow an advanced functionality of these materials and control of these before mentioned aspects of the graphenic material in 2D and 3D.
The gadget is a Y shaped microchannel with connections to two inlets and one outlet. This shape is the simplest configuration to generate precise composition gradients of two reagents that can be perfectly directed thanks to the fluid control that microfluidic devices allow in this scale.
Y. Xia et al. “Covalent transfer of chemical gradients onto a graphenic surface with 2D and 3D control”. Nature Communications, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34684-w