ICN2 and GraphCAT share new developments in graphene technologies at Graphene 2021

by Virginia Greco

The graphene community meets again in person at the Graphene 2021 conference, this year held in Grenoble on October 26-29. The ICN2 is taking part as part of the organization, with many presentations and as one of the members of GraphCAT.

The 11th edition of the Graphene Conference series, the largest European event in Graphene and 2D Materials, is taking place in these days (October 26-29) in Grenoble (France). The event is organized by Phantom Foundation in collaboration with many research institutes and organisms –ICN2, ICREA, Technische Universität Dresden, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, UC Louvain, and AMO.

Recent advances in 2D materials technologies are being discussed across four days of plenary sessions, parallel workshops, an industrial forum, doctoral student presentations and a poster session. The event also includes an exhibition space for research institute and industries working on 2D materials and their applications.

The ICN2 is directly involved in the organization of the Conference, with ICREA Prof. Stephan Roche, leader of the Theoretical and Computational Nanoscience Group, as a member of the Organising Committee. ICREA Prof. Arben Merkoci, leader of the Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group, gave an invited talk at the Industrial Forum and many other ICN2 researchers are contributing presentations or posters.

Very relevant, this year, is the participation to the exhibition within the framework of the GraphCAT project, which was launched in 2019 by ten non-profit research institutes –ICN2, ICFO, IREC, IFAE, UAB, IDIBAPS, EURECAT, IMB-CNM, IMIM and BIST— with the aim to establish Catalonia as a hub of excellence in graphene technology research and development. At the stand hold by GraphCAT, members of the ICN2 (Ylenia Almar, officer in the Competitive Funding Department and Project Manager of GraphCAT, Dr Virginia Greco and Àlex Argemi from the Marketing and Communication Department), the ICFO (Dr Marta Sans, Project Manager) and BIST (Clara Barreneche, Head of Innovation & Business Development) are presenting some of the graphene-based technologies developed by the GraphCAT consortium. The ICN2 is also introducing the new VRainCom virtual reality application, recently developed, and about to be launched, to promote the BrainCom project and explain its goals and technological developments through an immersive and interactive experience.

GraphCAT sponsored a session of the conference dedicated to graphene technology development in Catalonia, which was opened up by Dr. Marta Sans, who presented the GraphCAT project. Following, a few talks provided an overview of some of the many projects currently under development and of the steps that have been made to bring graphene applications closer to the market. Taygun Duvan, PhD student in the ICN2 Advanced Electronic Materials and Devices Group, explained the GraphRetina project, aimed at producing a new generation of retinal prosthesis for patients with retinal degeneration. In the same session were also presented the activities of INBRAIN Neuroelectronics –an ICN2 and ICREA’s spin-off company dedicated to the design of a new generation of neural interfaces—, Qurv Technologies –an ICFO’s spin-off developing wide-spectrum image sensors based on graphene and quantum-dot technologies— and of GraphSIM, a project led by the Autonomous University of Barcelona developing a simulation environment for hybrid graphene-silicon CMOS integrated circuits. The series of GraphCAT-related talks was closed by Dr Aron Cummings, senior researcher in the Theoretical and Computational Nanoscience Group, who talked about optimization of graphene photothermoelectric detectors.

The event will close tomorrow morning, with the last plenary session, in which Dr Klaas-Jan Tielrooij, leader of the ICN2 Ultrafast Dynamics in Nanoscale Systems Group, will take part with a talk about one of his recent works on graphene. With 450 participants in the current edition, this conference has strengthened its position as a very relevant gathering for the Graphene Community worldwide and the excitement of people to meet again in person, after last year’s virtual edition, is evident. See you all at Graphene 2022 in Aachen (Germany).