Oct 19 2016
Saint Jean Carbon Inc. ("Saint Jean" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:SJL), a carbon science company engaged in the exploration of natural graphite properties and related carbon products, is pleased to announce the successful development of hybrid graphene sheets with superconductivity. The work is the ongoing development of a number of different areas of research between the Company and University of Western Ontario.
Jin Zhang, Ph.D., Associate Professor Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering University of Western Ontario, commented: "Conventional superconductors show zero electrical resistance at low temperature, which makes them very efficient for many applications including MRI, ultrasensitive magnetic field detectors, efficient energy conduction and frictionless transportation (levitating trains). Our work by developing hybrid graphene sheets is to explore a new regime in the physics of ultra-thin superconductivity."
Hybrid graphene nanosheets were created by depositing yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) superconductor particles and were developed by using the matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE), a free-contamination method. With increasing irradiation time, the amount of YBCO nanoparticles deposited on graphene is increased. In addition, the microstructures and elemental composition of YBCO nanoparticle deposited on graphene sheet by the MAPLE process were studied in terms of particle size and shape as a function of the deposition time/irradiation time (t). It is noted that the shape and size of the YBCO nanoparticles are more uniform with increasing (t). When (t) increases to 2 hours, the average diameter of the spherical YBCO nanoparticles deposited on graphene sheets is around 50 ± 10 nm. This study demonstrates that MAPLE is a suitable process for depositing inorganic superconductor nanoparticles on graphene sheets without additional chemical agents. Click on link to view the abstract on "Graphene/YBCO Hybrid Nanosheets Prepared by Matrix Assisted Pulsed Laser Evaporation".
Paul Ogilvie, CEO, commented: "The abstract is an overview of the white paper that is out for peer review, and will be presented at the upcoming Graphene Canada event this week in Montreal. We feel strongly that our work continues to show great promise and how truly exciting it would be to be the first company to create nanosheet superconductivity. Graphene production and applications continue to grow every day and the more we research the closer we will get."