Haydale announced that its composites division Haydale Composite Solutions (HCS) has entered into a joint development and commercialisation agreement with Scott Bader Company, a global supplier of liquid resins, gel coats and adhesives.

Under the agreement, HCS will functionalize Graphene Nano Platelets utilising its proprietary HDPlas® process and add them to Scott Bader’s Crestapol resin to create a highly loaded masterbatch. This masterbatch will then be diluted down by Scott Bader and HCS into a range of concentrations from 1% to 8% and cast into resin plaques which will then be tested to quantify any improvements in mechanical, physical, electrical and thermal performance.

IBM scientists announced a remarkable engineering achievement - they have managed to exchange the silicon transistor contacts in transistors for smaller, more efficient, carbon nanotubes. This could have revolutionary potential as silicon is getting harder to shrink in size, while CNTs can allow a reduction in the size of transistors.

The smaller silicon transistor contacts get, the higher their electrical resistance becomes. There comes a point where the components simply get too small to conduct electrons efficiently and it seems that silicon is nearing that point. Carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, are a different story. They measure less than 10 nanometers in diameter (less than half the size of today's smallest silicon transistor contact) and IBM actually had to devise a new means of attaching these tiny components. Known as an "end-bonded contact scheme" the 10 nm electrical leads are chemically bonded to the metal substructure. Replacing these contacts with carbon nanotubes won't just allow for computers to crunch more data, faster. This breakthrough ensures that they'll continue to shrink, following Moore's Law, for several iterations beyond what silicon components are capable of.

Group NanoXplore is a Montreal-based company specializing in the production and application of graphene and its derivative materials. The company's CEO and President, Dr. Soroush Nazarpour, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had regarding NanoXplore's technology and business.

Q: Hello Dr. Soroush. Can you update us on your current graphene material production and your new 3-ton GNP production facility?

Our Montreal production facility is running at full steam. Not only are we producing a full range of graphene materials, we are making more and more graphene-enhanced polymer products. In October we will be moving to a new facility, having outgrown our current space. The new facility will double our lab facilities and more than quadruple our production floor space.

We are seeing especially strong demand for graphene-enhanced plastics and rubber, with most customers focusing on improving mechanical and thermal characteristics. We have also seen a lot of emerging demand for coatings for textiles and other flexible substrates for thermal management, improved surface properties and protection.