GNPs - Page 12

Haydale has announced an agreement with Australian technology materials development company Talga Resources. As part of the collaboration, Talga and Haydale will jointly explore industrial scale business cooperation opportunities utilising Talga graphitic carbon nanomaterials, graphite and GNP’s value-added with Haydale’s proprietary low temperature plasma functionalization treatment and end user demand chains. 

The initial project will be for Haydale to analyse Talga carbon nanomaterial samples with aims of using those materials in its ongoing composite or ink research programmes and develop tailored finished or functionalized products that can be supplied to both Haydale and Talga’s end users or intermediaries for integration by them into their end use applications. Haydale is hopeful that this initial project will, over time, lead to additional projects with associated revenue streams.

Lux Research recently came out with a rather menacing prediction that graphene is destined to become the "next carbon nanotube". This statement refers to the massive hype that surrounded carbon nanotubes in the past, which failed to be followed by actual commercial success. Lux Research believes that graphene, despite its impressive properties and seemingly endless possibilities, will not follow in silicon's footsteps and find ubiquitous applications, but rather become closer to carbon nanotubes and find limited uses in somewhat niche markets.

Lux names three major reasons for their prediction. The first is over-aggressive capacity expansions coupled with limited commercial demand. Lux states that total global graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) production capacity has increased from around 120 tons per year in 2012 to 910 tons per year today, driven largely by aggressive Chinese capacity expansions such as by Ningbo Morsh and Xiamen Knano. On the contrary, demand growth has been significantly more sluggish, which creates a market glut.

Versarien, the advanced engineering materials group, recently announced that its graphene development subsidiary, 2-DTech, has achieved a major breakthrough in graphene production. The 2-DTech production process provides significant amounts of single layer graphene on an industrial scale.

The company believes that this significant advance will accelerate potential commercial applications for graphene and graphene products. As a result of 2-DTech's investment program, it has developed its own proprietary graphene production technique founded upon a licensed process from University of Ulster.

International wheel producer Vittoria released a new range of bicycle wheels that are built from graphene-enhanced composite materials. The wheels, called Quarno (Graphene Plus inside) are now available in three different editions (46, 60 and 84 mm) and contain graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) provided by Directa Plus.

The company explains that the graphene grants the wheels advantages like heat dissipation (15-30°C lower) a crucial factor in the slopes, an increase in lateral stiffness (more than 50%) and puncture reduction, especially around the valve area. A couple of wheels weigh 1,250 grams together and the price ranges from €1,450 to €1,850.

Future Markets released a new market report (The Global Market for Graphene to 2025) in which they estimate that the graphene market (mostly raw materials sales) was about $9-12 million in 2013 and $15-20 million in 2014. They estimate the market to grow to around $25-45 million in 2015.

According to the report, there is currently an oversupply situation in the graphene market - especially for low quality graphene. Most graphene sales are of graphene flakes (nanoplatelets) and conductive inks, while larger graphene sheets grown using CVD are used mainly for R&D. The main markets for graphene in the next 5-7 years will be Lithium batteries, conductive inks, sensors, supercapacitors, composites and transparent conductive films.

Haydale announced its intention to enter a collaborative agreement with Alex Thomson Racing the HUGO BOSS sponsored extreme sailing team. Haydale, through its newly acquired subsidiary EPL Composite Solutions Limited, will work with ATR to incorporate graphene enhanced materials in their Research and Development program to improve overall strength and stiffness of a number of key structures within the ATR boat. Through incorporating new graphene enhanced materials in their future boat designs - ATR are seeking to keep their vessel light to ensure optimum speed without compromising on strength.

The initial work will include an immediate review to ascertain weight saving opportunities. In particular the parties are keen to make use of the recent work done by Haydale in adding their functionalised HDPlas® Graphene Nano Platelets (GNPs) into both Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic ("CFRP") and epoxy resins.

Haydale announced it has entered into a 5 year exclusive pipeline agreement with Swansea University and Swansea Innovations.

The agreement stipulates that Swansea will carry out a series of internally funded research projects to produce prototype applications using a range of Haydale materials. These materials can be the functionalised Haydale Graphene Nano Platelets (GNPs), and the Haydale conductive and insulating inks formulated by its collaboration partner the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating (WCPC).

The British company 2-DTech, maker and supplier of 2D materials that was spun-off by the University of manchester, started selling graphene in water dispersible form.

The company developed a technique which makes it possible to manufacture graphene products in a solution using water and isopropanol (IPA). This should have various commercial and logistical benefits, and hopefully assist in bringing forth developemnts and innovations in graphene applications.

The UK based Haydale and The School of Engineering at Cardiff University have announced the results of a new research that shows improvements in the mechanical performance of carbon fibre composites.

The research tested graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) and carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced technology. The results of this research show a 13% increase in compression strength and a 50% increase in compression after impact performance, indicating that fracture mode has been positively influenced. This is significant because damage resistance and compression properties are extremely important in high performance structures, such as composite aircraft wings.

Researchers from The University of Western Australia report that graphene flakes can be used as catalysts for chemical reactions. The researchers made their discovery using computer simulations.

This is still an early research. The team now wants to extend the scope of their calculations and find out whether more chemical reactions can benefit from graphene. In addition they want to check larger graphene sheets and not just flakes.