Non‐thermal gas plasmas (NTGPs) are a promising emergent medical technology.a Unlike thermal plasmas, they generate a complex room temperature mix of reactive species which interact with tissues. The characterization of candidate plasmas and their interaction with tissues has shown that they produce a variety of broadly dose dependent effects ranging from fibroblast proliferation to angiogenesis and bacterial destruction. These findings, supported by recent experiments using skin models, suggest that NTGP's could potentially play an important role in both decontaminating acute and chronic wounds and accelerating healing. However, important issues over toxicological and environmental safety remain unanswered and a number of regulatory and technical hurdles will need to be overcome before a NTGP medical device is released.

In the new era of modern flexible and bendable technology, graphene-based materials have attracted great attention. The excellent electrical, mechanical, and optical properties of graphene as well as the ease of functionalization of its derivates have enabled graphene to become an attractive candidate for the construction of flexible devices. This paper provides a comprehensive review about the most recent progress in the synthesis and applications of graphene-based composites. Composite materials based on graphene, graphene oxide (GO), and reduced graphene oxide (rGO), as well as conducting polymers, metal matrices, carbon–carbon matrices, and natural fibers have potential application in energy-harvesting systems, clean-energy storage devices, and wearable and portable electronics owing to their superior mechanical strength, conductivity, and extraordinary thermal stability. Additionally, the difficulties and challenges in the current development of graphene are summarized and indicated. This review provides a comprehensive and useful database for further innovation of graphene-based composite materials.

Transport measurements have revealed several exotic electronic properties of graphene. The possibility to influence the electronic structure and hence control the conductivity by adsorption or doping with adatoms is crucial in view of electronics applications. Here, we show that in contrast to expectation, the conductivity of graphene increases with increasing concentration of vacancy defects, by more than one order of magnitude. We obtain a pronounced enhancement of the conductivity after insertion of defects by both quantum mechanical transport calculations as well as experimental studies of carbon nano-sheets. Our finding is attributed to the defect induced mid-gap states, which create a region exhibiting metallic behavior around the vacancy defects. The modification of the conductivity of graphene by the implementation of stable defects is crucial for the creation of electronic junctions in graphene-based electronics devices.

Graphene is a two-dimensional material with a capability of gas sensing, which is here shown to be drastically improved by inducing gentle disorder in the lattice. We report that by using a focused ion beam technique, controlled disorder can be introduced into the graphene structure through Ga(+) ion irradiation. This disorder leads to an increase in the electrical response of graphene to NO(2) gas molecules by a factor of three in an ambient environment (air). Ab initio density functional calculations indicate that NO(2) molecules bind strongly to Stone-Wales defects, where they modify electronic states close to the Fermi level, which in turn influence the transport properties. The demonstrated gas sensor, utilizing structurally defected graphene, shows faster response, higher conductivity changes and thus higher sensitivity to NO(2) as compared to pristine graphene.

A combination of electron beam lithography, photolithography and focused ion beam milling was used to create a nanogap platform, which was bridged by gold nanoparticles in order to make electrical measurements and assess the platform under ambient conditions. Non-functionalized electrodes were tested to determine the intrinsic response of the platform and it was found that creating devices in ambient conditions requires careful cleaning and awareness of the contributions contaminants may make to measurements. The platform was then used to make measurements on octanethiol (OT) and biphenyldithiol (BPDT) molecules by functionalizing the nanoelectrodes with the molecules prior to bridging the nanogap with nanoparticles. Measurements on OT show that it is possible to make measurements on relatively small numbers of molecules, but that a large variation in response can be expected when one of the metal-molecule junctions is physisorbed, which was partially explained by attachment of OT molecules to different sites on the surface of the Au electrode using a density functional theory calculation. On the other hand, when dealing with BPDT, high yields for device creation are very difficult to achieve under ambient conditions. Significant hysteresis in the I-V curves of BPDT was also observed, which was attributed primarily to voltage induced changes at the interface between the molecule and the metal.