Open Access Paper

This special issue has been created to mark the opening of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) in Manchester, UK. This edition contains a selection of technical and business developments during 2018. The pace of advancement is astonishing, this document could easily have been twice the size and we would still not be able to fit in everything. James Baker talks about the emerging industry in terms of the graphene tipping point. This is a change in the dynamic from a technology push to a market pull. Graphene is beginning to move out of the laboratory and into real world applications. This is a view shared by many of the leaders in this field and we illustrate this with our sample of the activity from this year in this report. Graphene is starting to appear in commercial applications. The biggest deal of the year is probably the supply of graphene for the latest Huawei phone. Graphene is also being sold in volume into textiles for clothing. Early 2019 models of some Ford cars will start to roll off the production lines with graphene components. Three of the top graphene companies in the world are partners at the GEIC, working on graphene projects that will prevent fires, make concrete stronger and reduce CO2 emissions, make counterfeiting harder, make batteries better and improve the efficiency of aircraft design and manufacture.