May 2014

Smithers Apex announced the speakers for the first Graphene World Summit, a graphene-focused event that will take place September 15-16 in Kerkeley, California. The speaker list is quite impressive - and it includes IBM, Argonne National Laboratory, Applied Graphene Materials, Grafoid, Bluestone Global Tech, Cambridge Graphene Center, Cientifica, Graphene Frontiers, Graphene Technologies, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Graphenea, Strategic News Service, XG Sciences, Raytheon and more.

The summit will focus on bringing together the scientific and business communities. Planned sessions at event include the global path to standardization, innovation and commercialization; investment strategies; material development and production case studies; and game-changing applications and commercialization success stories.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Korea University developed a simple spray method to deposit high quality graphene flakes films on a range of substrates.

The method is based on a unique kinetic spray deposition system developed in Korea that was originally used to spray materials other than graphene. Together, the researchers adapted this method to graphene and they found that it dispersed evenly and it reduces the tendency of the graphene flakes to aggregate.

Researchers from the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials developed a new material that combines graphene and aluminum alloy. The institute aims to use this strong material to enhance titanium alloys - and produce new materials for aircrafts.

This material has a yield strength of 58% and a tensile strength of 25% - which are excellent properties for making high-end alloys.

In February UK-based Perpetuus Carbon Technologies entered the graphene supply market, and a month later the company launched two graphene based products - a graphene based ink and an ITO alternative polymer coating.

Today Perpetuus said it is going to give £2.5 million($4.2 million) - or up to 100 Kgs - of surface modified graphenes to the UK graphene academic research community. Perpetuus will invite twenty research organizations to collect 5kg of high quality friable surface modified graphenes each. Such a 5 Kg package is worth up to £125,000.

American Graphite Technologies (AGT) announced that it received updates from Cheap Tubes on the graphene paper project progress.

Cheap Tubes reports that it has made considerable progress the aqueous formulation from recent development initiatives. Cheap Tubes managed to improve the conductivity of the paper by over 100% (previous conductivity was 35 ohms, now it is less than 15 ohms). Cheap Tubes also reports that two production lines have been moved to the new facility. The small, 12-inch wide line is close to operational and the large 30-inch wide line should be operational by fourth quarter 2014.

Australia's Strategic Energy Resources (SER) announced that the company resolved to focus on graphene-related investments. SER already have an alliance with Monash University and an exclusive license agreement with the University on the energy storage graphene technologies. Using Monash's technology, SER formed a new company called Graphitech to handle all commercial and IP activities resulting from Monash's technology.

SER also holds a stage in Valence Industries, a public Australian Graphite company that is also involved with graphene research, together with the University of Adelaide.

Researchers from MIT and the University of Michigan developed a new way to deposit graphene on nonmetal substrates. Current methods usually involved growing graphene on metal substrates, but this creates problems when you try to transfer the material to a different substrates.

The new method still grows the graphene on a metal substrate - but they do it in a way that grows the graphene on both sides of the metal substrate. The process starts with the nonmetal substrate of choice, which is coated with nickel. Using CVD, graphene is grown on the nickel - but the graphene forms two layers, one of them between the nickel and the nonmetal substrate. The nickel is then easily peeled off which leaves a single graphene layer on the nonmetal substrate.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool managed to fabricate, for the first time, a new 2D material called triazine-based graphitic carbon nitride, or TGCN. TGCN is similar to graphene but it has a band gap.

To produce the TGCN, the researcher started with dicyandiamide. They then created crystals of graphitic carbon nitride (a 2D material). Both materials were combined in a quartz tube and heated for 62 hours (at 600 degrees Celsius). The resulting liquid contains TGCN flakes.

Aixtron announced today that Shanghai University ordered a BM R&D reactor that will be used for graphene and CNT research at the University's Sino-Sweden Microsystem Integration Technology Center (SMIT).

The University researchers will use this new reactor for their research into CNT and graphene application using thermal- and plasma-based chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The researchers aim to develop next generation thermal interface/dissipating materials, heat spreaders, multi-chip interconnects and through silicon vias (TSV) for semiconductor chip packaging.

IDTechEx released a new graphene material market report (Graphene Markets, Technologies and Opportunities 2014-2024) in which they forecast that the graphene market (at the material level) will grow from about $20 million in 2014 to over $390 million in 2024.

As the industry matures, IDTechEx sees the graphene market splitting across many application sectors, each attracting different types of graphene materials, manufactured using different means.