TreeHugger has a post on using graphene for energy efficient lighting - Move Over OLEDs: Scientists Create Cheap, Fully Recyclable Lighting Material.

Swedish and American researchers have just developed a fully recyclable lighting component with what Science Daily is terms a "new super material": graphene. Graphene is both inexpensive to produce and is 100% recyclable, and could be used to create glowing wallpaper made out of plastic--much like )LEDs could. But graphene appears to improve on OLEDs in some very big ways . . .

As you know, we've been big fans of the very efficient, long-lasting Light Emitting Diodes and Organic LED technology. But as Science Daily notes, there are still problems:

Today's OLEDs have two drawbacks -- they are relatively expensive to produce, and the transparent electrode consists of the metal alloy indium tin oxide. The latter presents a problem because indium is both rare and expensive and moreover is complicated to recycle.

Researchers believe they've found a solution by creating an organic light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) with the transparent electrode made of the "carbon material graphene." Graphene is used instead of conventional metal electrodes--and since everything in an LEC, including the graphene, can be created from liquid solutions, they will be able to be produced through a printing process. This makes them much more efficient--and much less expensive--to create en masse than OLEDs. Researchers involved in the project say that graphene paves the way for cheap production of plastic-based lighting, perhaps for the first time.

Technology Review has an article on using graphene in "ultracapacitors could help the grid run smoothly" - Graphene for the Green Grid. I quite like the idea of branding a smarter, expanded grid as the "green grid".

Integrating irregular sources of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, with the electrical grid, while keeping power output steady, is going to be a big challenge. Energy-storage devices called ultracapacitors could help by storing sudden surges of power. But much will depend on developing a new generation of ultracapacitors with enough storage capacity to meet the likely demand.

Graphene Energy, a startup based in Austin, TX, hopes that ultracapacitors with electrodes made of graphene--sheets of carbon just an atom thick--will be the solution. The storage capacity of an ultracapacitor is limited only by the surface area of its electrodes, and graphene offers a way to greatly increase the area available.

Ultracapacitors store energy electrostatically, instead of chemically, as in batteries. During charging, electrons come to the surface of one electrode, and electron "holes" form on the surface of the other. This draws positive ions in an electrolyte to the first electrode and negative ions to the second. By contrast, the chemical reactions used to charge batteries limit the speed with which they can be charged and eventually cause the electrode materials to break down. Ultracapacitors can be charged and discharged very rapidly, in seconds rather than minutes, and can be recharged millions of times before wearing out.

However, ultracapacitors currently on the market can't match batteries for energy density, so they're mostly used in hybrid systems alongside batteries or for niche applications. Because these devices can handle a rapid influx of large amounts of energy, they're often used to recover energy--for example, when a city bus breaks or a gantry crane lowers its cargo. Ultracapacitors employed in this way have reduced by 40 percent the energy needed by some cranes used in Japanese ports. A few power tools, including an electric drill, take advantage of the rapid recharging ability of ultracapacitors.

Graphene Energy hopes to open up new ultracapacitor applications by developing devices with far higher power output. These ultracapacitors could perhaps be used to regulate surges in the electrical grid or to power hybrid transportation vehicles. The company has $500,000 in seed funding to commercialize graphene ultracapacitors developed by Rodney Ruoff, a professor and chair of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Ruoff is a cofounder of Graphene Energy and also serves as the company's technology advisor.

Technology Review has an article on "How to Make Graphene", looking at a simple way to deposit thin films of carbon that could lead to cheaper solar cells.

Graphene--a flat single layer of carbon atoms--can transport electrons at remarkable speeds, making it a promising material for electronic devices. Until recently, researchers had been able to make only small flakes of the material, and only in small quantities. However, Rutgers University researchers have developed an easy way to make transparent graphene films that are a few centimeters wide and one to five nanometers thick.

Thin films of graphene could provide a cheap replacement for the transparent, conductive indium tin oxide electrodes used in organic solar cells. They could also replace the silicon thin-film transistors common in display screens. Graphene can transport electrons tens of times faster than silicon, so graphene-based transistors could work faster and consume less power.

In fact, Rutgers materials science and engineering professor Manish Chhowalla and his colleagues used their graphene films to make prototype transistors and organic solar calls. In a recent Nature Nanotechnology paper, they showed that they can deposit the transparent films on any substrate, including glass and flexible plastic. Chhowalla says that the method could be adapted to a larger scale to coat "meters and meters of substrates with graphene films," using roll-to-roll processing, a technique being developed to make large flexible electronic circuits.