Today we published a new edition of our Graphene Investment Guide, with all the latest information and financial updates from public graphene companies. This is still a challenging time for many graphene companies - and also for graphene investors. Almost all the 23 public graphene companies we track show their share price decline in the past year. 

It is a time of consolidation in the industry - and investors should be careful when looking at early stage graphene companies. Most graphene companies struggle to generate meaningful revenues, and we expect consolidation and liquidation to continue in the next few years.

The Graphene Investment Guide includes:

• An introduction to graphene
• An overview of graphene's most exciting applications
• An analysis of graphene's potential
• Market forecasts from leading analysts
• Detailed descriptions and financials of all public graphene companies
• Over 80 financial reports and company presentations (premium edition only)
• Graphene-Info's own investment thesis and action plan

Any technology-driven investor that wishes to stay current on the most promising new nanotechnology should look into this report. The report includes extensive data and information needed to launch a successful strategic graphene investment portfolio.

Archer Materials, a semiconductor company advancing the quantum technology and medical diagnostics industries, has fabricated one of its Biochip graphene field effect transistor (gFET) designs through a six-inch whole wafer run by its foundry partner in Spain, Graphenea.

Archer had sent the Biochip gFET design to Graphenea for fabrication through a whole wafer run in Dec 20231. The gFETs are designed with structures suitable for liquid multiplexing, with advances in chip design features, including in gating design and materials, to address technological challenges in maintaining graphene device stability from chip-to-chip.

Researchers have been working on creating elastic and tough graphene films, but it has proven quite challenging so far. Now, researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University have introduced a method to overcome this hurdle: they linked graphene nanolayers via "extendable" bridging structures.

Image credit: Angewandte Chemie

The special properties of graphene nanolayers often drop off when the layers are assembled into foils, because they are only held together by relatively weak interactions—primarily hydrogen bonds. Approaches that attempt to improve the mechanical properties of graphene foils by introducing stronger interactions have only been partially successful, leaving room for improvement in the stretchability and toughness of the materials. The research team, led by Xuzhou Yan at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, chose a new approach: they cross-linked graphene nanolayers with mechanically interlocked molecules whose building blocks are not chemically linked, but rather inseparably spatially entangled. The researchers used rotaxanes as their links.

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced a raise of up to C$20 million (over USD$14.5 million) through the sale of ordinary shares, primarily to fund ongoing operations and development initiatives.

Under the terms of the agreement, GMG has the discretion to sell ordinary shares through the Agent, Cantor Fitzgerald. Sales will be conducted through market distributions on the TSX Venture Exchange or other eligible Canadian trading markets. Proceeds from will support GMG's ongoing operations, including commercial and product development, as well as working capital needs.

Researchers at Fraunhofer FEP have developed a PECVD process that enables deposition of graphene at high process speeds and on a wider range of substrates at lower temperatures.

As part of the funded EU project NewSkin, the Fraunhofer Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP has developed the innovative PECVD process that enables the deposition of graphene at high process speeds and offers higher production throughputs and a wider range of substrates at lower process temperatures. The researchers will present the process at Manufacturing World Tokyo from June 19 - 21, 2024 at booth No. E 53-11 in Tokyo, Japan.

Gerdau Graphene has announced the availability of NanoCORR Shield, the newest product from its G2D NanoCORR line of anti-corrosion paints and coatings additives. Developed with Gerdau Graphene's exclusive G2D technology, NanoCORR Shield is a graphene-enhanced chemical additive designed to increase the corrosion resistance of solvent-based paints and coatings. NanoCORR Shield has demonstrated a 30-70% increase in corrosion resistance when subjected to salt spray testing.

The addition of a small amount of specially-developed graphene into paints and coatings allows for an increase in the barrier effect against corrosive elements such as water, oxygen, and chlorides. In addition, NanoCORR reduces paint consumption by reducing the nominal thickness of the coating while maintaining the paint or coatings' other characteristics and performance properties.

German semiconductor startup, Black Semiconductor, has secured EUR 254.4 million (around USD$275,900,000) in funding to launch graphene-enhanced semiconductor technology in Europe. With the funding, the company says that it is on track to realize the first phase of its vision – advancing a new generation of chip technology from research to mass production by 2031.

The Company has secured EUR 228.7 million (around USD$248,000,000) in public funding from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia over the next 7 years under the IPCEI ME/CT2 program.

Directa Plus has announced plans to raise between GBP6.8 to GBP6.9 million (between USD$8,663,000 - USD$8,800,000).

Cavendish Capital Markets Ltd and Singer Capital Markets Securities Ltd are acting as joint brokers to the placing. Nant Capital, the largest shareholder in Directa Plus, agrees to take part in this raise. 

British climate tech firm Levidian and clean hydrogen developer Hexla have joined forces to bring Levidian’s LOOP technology to Worthy Farm in Somerset in a "world first example of carbon negative hydrogen production from biomethane", as the Companies described it.  

Home to the Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm currently produces power using an anaerobic digestion plant that turns tens of thousands of tonnes of cow slurry and waste silage into energy. The LOOP technology will allow the farm to capture the carbon from some of the biomethane produced as part of this process and turn it into graphene and clean hydrogen, which will be used to generate electricity through the existing combined heat and power plant.

Researchers from the University of Manchester, The Pennsylvania State University, Koç University and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) have tackled the challenge of control of thermal radiation, demonstrating a new topology-based approach.

The team explained that conventional approaches to tailoring thermal emission using metamaterials are hampered both by the limited spatial resolution of the required subwavelength material structures and by the materials’ strong absorption in the infrared. In their recent work, the scientists developed an approach based on the concept of topology: by changing a single parameter of a multilayer coating, they were able to control the reflection topology of a surface, with the critical point of zero reflection being topologically protected.