BGT Materials

BGT Materials, the UK-based graphene technology company, has announced that it has received the first commercial order for its subsidiary, Graphene Security. GS, developer of flexible and green wireless antenna solutions, has chosen its first application to be in the RFID industry where graphene is used as the antenna inlays. This technology was recently demonstrated in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

BGT Materials has also a second subsidiary, Graphene Lighting, that designs and manufactures next-generation LED lighting, using graphene as a thermal dissipation solution. It has developed the Graphene Light Bulbs, and a full product rollout is underway which includes a full range of home, commercial and street lighting.

According to The Times, the UK is set to launch an investigation relating to the NGI and BGT Materials. The inquiry will follow concerns that lucrative information could be passed to China through BGT, a British company majority-owned by a Taiwanese businessman. It was even claimed that academics refuse to work at the £61 million National Graphene Institute (NGI) due to these concerns.

The NGI and BGT refute these claims. The NGI stated that: "The University of Manchester has thoroughly investigated all of the claims and allegations put to it by the Sunday Times and has found no evidence whatsoever that BGT Materials or Bluestone has had access, outside of any confidentiality undertaking, to confidential research programmes or that there were insufficient safeguards to protect the University’s Intellectual Property.

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.

Update: It turns out that Konstantin Novoselov did not join the new research institute, he just visited to give a lecture...

In 2013, Shanghai-based Powerbooster Technology developed a graphene-based flexible touch-panels for mobile devices, with ambitious plans to mass produce those panels. The graphene supplier for powerbooster is Bluestone Global Tech (BGT).

Now it is reported that BGT, Power Booster and Xiamen University established the Graphene Industrial Technology Research Institute in Xiamen. The will mainly develop the applications of graphene in batteries, touch screens, cancer treatment, LED lamps, sea water desalination and more.

A few days ago we reported on Bluestone Global Tech's new graphene based Field Effect Transistors. We have discussed it with BGT and have some more details on this exciting development. So first of all, we reported that the Gray-FETs are currently offered for research only, but BGT says that they are using a fab that can produce these in volume "to meet most demands". So this is suitable for commercial applications.

In fact BGT is already in talks with several academic and industrial customers. Having a standard GFET product can save a lot of time and will enable those customers to develop their own products based on these transistors faster then if they need to first develop the GFET themselves.

Bluestone Global Tech announced a new groundbreaking product today, the world's first graphene based Field Effect Transistor. BGT's Grat-FET is a wafer with 9 different GFET chips (or FET arrays), each with 64 FETs. Grat-FET is aimed towards research and development work and not for commercial production.

BGT's GFETs are fabricated (using CVD) on a silicon wafer covered with a SiO₂ layer. The high mobility (2000 cm²/Vs or more) graphene is used as the transistor channel. Each transistor consists of three terminals: source and drain metal electrodes and a global back gate.

Bluestone Global Tech decided to open a new European graphene production plant at the University of Manchester. Bluestone will also partner with the University on several projects. Those projects (detailed below) and the pilot production facility are estimated at £5 million ($7.8 million) which will be funded wholly by BGT.

The National Graphene Center plan

This new deal signs the first strategic partnership of the £61 million National Graphene Institute (NGI) established at Manchester and Bluestone is the first company (except University Spin-Offs Graphene Industries and 2-D Tech) to work at the NGI. Specifically Bluestone will open a pre-production facility and will offer graphene material to the University of Manchester's 100+ scientists and engineers working on graphene and other 2D materials. Later on BGT will setup a larger headquarters and a pilot production line at the NGI and will also work towards partnership with other consumer companies.

The wall street journal posted an interesting article and video on graphene. The article discusses the current state of research and business, possible graphene applications and the rush to patent related technologies.

The article starts with the Cambridge graphene research center and then discusses several companies and their graphene programs, including IBM, Nokia, BlueStone Global Tech, Vorbeck Materials, Lockheed Martin and Aixtron.

Bluestone Global Tech released a new video showing a test of their Gratom-O product (a graphene film on PET). This flexible film's physical integrity and high conductivity remain completely in tact, even after 25,000 bending cycles:

Gratam-O is a large-area CVD graphene film on PET (it can also be transferred to customized substrates). It features low sheet resistance and high optical transmittance (over 97%).

Last month we posted about Shanghai's Powerbooster Technology and their graphene-based flexible touch-panels for mobile devices. The company is using Bluestone Global Tech's graphene to produce those panels. BGT now posted a nice video showing these touch panels in action: