Vol 8 Issue 1

As fascinating as the technical developments are, it is the commercial side which needs highlighting in this summary this month. More evidence is mounting to support James Baker’s claim that graphene has reached a turning point and has overcome the hype of its early teens. We are starting to see noticeable movements in the five-year share price trends of graphene companies. Companies that have antiviral or battery applications are beneficiaries of renewed attention. I’ll draw your attention to the graphene companies share price section of this issue. There is a new graphene company, Sparc Technologies, launched on the Australian stock exchange. It has a deal to commercialise patents developed by the University of Adelaide and has attracted significant investor interest. Another Australian company GMG reported its series C investment round of AUD3million was oversubscribed. The company plans to float on the stock exchange next year. A new company called Toraphene has appeared making an eponymous product that is a graphene biopolymer that makes biodegradable packaging. It launched as a crowdfunded initiative and has raised nearly GBP700K already, double its ask. We have contacted the company and asked for more technical information about its products. Integrated Graphene Ltd, (IG) announced the completion of a GBP3.1 million round of investment in the business, IG is a UK Scottish-based tech company that manufactures a graphene foam that they call Gii. The company is targeting medical diagnostics and supercapacitors markets. Estonian supercapacitor company Skeleton is continuing its unstoppable rise. It announced it has raised EUR41.3 million ($48.5 million) in Series D financing This brings its total capital raised to over EUR93 million ($109 million) Lots of activity around graphene enhanced lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. As far as we can tell, this seems to be creating improvements in the life of the battery by maintaining the integrity of the electrodes. Improvements in charging time are also claimed. Tellingly, there is no evidence that graphene is improving the energy density of batteries. The rush to electric vehicles is creating a market pull for better batteries that the technology does not seem to be able to match. For now, if you want to travel further in your battery powered car, then you have to add more batteries. We finally discovered which tool is being used for the at-line Raman spectroscopy quality control for the production of graphene powders. First graphene has acquired the QT-Sampler made by BWTEK Metrohm. This allows the company to measure flake aspect ratio and number of layers of the graphene powders they produce. The data is used for statistical process control which means they have a sophisticated approach to making and characterising a consistent product. Adrian Nixon, 1st December 2020

It is not every month that a new allotrope of carbon is announced. The last time this happened was back in 2019 when researchers in the UK and Switzerland made a ring of 18 atoms called cyclocarbon (Vol3 iss9 p.12). This month a joint team in Germany and Finland have made a flat sheet of carbon atoms with 4 6 and 8 rings. They call this new material a biphenylene network (BPN). This new material seems to be exciting the researchers because it exhibits metallic character. It also opens the door to explore other potential allotropes of carbon. Graphene-metal composites also make another appearance this month. Two Indian organisations have been working on aluminium-graphene composites (Al-G). Tirupati graphite says it has made an Al-G composite that has 95% the electrical conductivity of copper with the light weight of aluminium (although no has been presented yet). The Maharaja Agrasen University has published a peer reviewed paper showing that 1% graphene powder produced a 67% increase in the ultimate strength of the aluminium composite. A joint team in the Netherlands and Germany has made a Pirani pressure sensor from multilayer CVD graphene. It is not only 100 times smaller than the state-of-the-art sensors; it consumes a fraction of the power and is so sensitive it can detect different gas molecules. Aerospace and automotive applications abound. A new car company, Viritech, has announced it is building an electric supercar with a range of 800km and a top speed in excess of 300km/hr. The company has rejected batteries in favour of a hydrogen fuel cell to generate the electricity. The hydrogen storage tank is made from graphene enhanced carbon fibre and is an integral part of the chassis. Production is due to start in 2023. Graphene enhanced concrete made the headlines this month. British construction company Nationwide Engineering and the University of Manchester’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) have created graphene enhanced concrete for the whole floor of a new building in Amesbury, UK. As well as being a practical success in CO2 reduction the use of graphene has reduced the quantity of materials involved by 30% and potentially cut the costs between 10 and 20%. This will catch on. Adrian Nixon, 1st June 2021