Graphene Coating: introduction and market status - Page 5

Sparc Technologies has announced the commissioning of Sparc's ecosparc commercial production facility. The state of the art facility aims to enable Sparc to produce commercial quantities of the graphene additive product, ecosparc®. Target markets include the global coatings industry, composites and other graphene additive applications.

The new production facility will enable Sparc to provide commercial quantities of graphene additive product for trials with global coatings companies. The Company is currently undertaking evaluations with potential global end users with results from these evaluations expected in Q3 and Q4 CY23 respectively. In parallel, the company is pursuing opportunities to target Australian coatings companies that are looking to enhance the anti-corrosive and environmental performance of their products, with the addition of ecosparc.

UK-based Evove, developer of a graphene-based water filtration technology designed to tackle water shortage, has announced that it has secured £5.7 million (around USD$6,750,000) in a round of funding led by One Ventures with participation from AM Ventures and existing investors.

Evove says it will use the funds to expand its manufacturing capacity, scale up its 3D-printed membrane process, and capitalize on its substantial pipeline of opportunities. 

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced it has received full and final approval of all its graphene products from the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme (AICIS) of the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under Assessment statement CA09624.

AICIS approval allows GMG to significantly increase the production and sale of GMG graphene-enhanced products including:

• Coatings: THERMAL-XR® and other industrial coatings as developed;
• Automotive Fluids: G® LUBRICANT, G® COOLANT and other automotive liquids as developed;
• Fuel: G® DIESEL ; and
• Batteries: including for GMG’s Graphene Aluminium Ion Battery.

Sparc Technologies has progressed construction of a modular and scalable manufacturing facility to produce graphene-based additives with commissioning expected in Q1 CY23.

The facility will enable the production of commercial quantities of graphene-based additives for the growing global coatings and composites markets, according to the Company's investor update.

University of Sussex scientists, along with teams from Spain's Instituto de Carboquímica (ICB-CSIC) and Instituto de Nanociencia de Aragon (INA), UK's University of Brighton, France's Institut des Materiaux Nantes Jean Rouxel and Rice University in the U.S, have demonstrated how a conductive paint coating that they have developed mimics the network spread of a virus through a process called 'explosive percolation'—a mathematical process which can also be applied to population growth, financial systems and computer networks, but which has not been seen before in materials systems.

The process of percolation—the statistical connectivity in a system, such as when water flows through soil or through coffee grounds—is an important component in the development of liquid technology. And it was that process which the research group was expecting to see when they added graphene oxide to polymer latex spheres, such as those used in emulsion paint, to make a polymer composite. However, when the team heated the graphene oxide to make it electrically conductive, the scientists kick-started a process that saw this conductive system grow exponentially, to the extent that the new material created consumed the network, similar to the way a new strain of a virus can become dominant.

Directa Plus has been awarded a €136,000 grant from the Italian region of Lombardy to develop paints and coverings with its G+ graphene nano-platelets. “This grant from the Lombardy local government will help fund Directa Plus to develop these potentially disruptive products in a faster timeframe than we could have achieved using our own resources,” said founder and chief executive Giulio Cesareo in a statement.

Directa has created a new technology, called Grafyshield, a granular, semi-finished G+ formulation for the coatings market. Grafyshield is “designed to be easy to handle and mixable with resins using mixing equipment,” the producer and supplier of nano-platelets-based products said. The target for the new formulation is to bring anti-corrosion and flame-retardant properties to the final paint system.

Advanced Material Development (AMD) has announced that it has signed a contract for collaborative work with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for AMD’s proprietary thin-film graphene-based coatings technology - a Radio Frequency absorbing nanomaterial that can be applied to a variety of substrates. JPL is a research and development laboratory federally funded by NASA and managed by the California Institute of Technology.

Image from AMD website, Courtesy of NASA/JPL-CalTech

The collaborative work is planned to be used for the NASA Europa Clipper spacecraft electromagnetic compatibility test campaign. AMD’s materials could help enable the Europa Clipper project to confirm that the spacecraft’s sensitive ice-penetrating radar will operate properly at key frequencies so as to meet science objectives.

Zentek recently announced the successful completion of sand erosion testing at the National Research Council (“NRC”) in Ottawa and rain erosion testing at the Anti-icing Materials International Laboratory (“AMIL”) in Quebec on Zentek’s patent-pending Icephobic Coatings. These results were said to demonstrate that the company’s icephobic technology is durable in adverse conditions for both wind turbine and drone industries, where Zentek is currently maintaining its focus.

“We are very happy with both the performance and durability test results for our icephobic coating and look forward to continued testing and demonstration of our technology,” said Greg Fenton, CEO of Zentek. “Ice accretion is a significant problem in the drone and wind turbine industries with few robust solutions currently available. We believe our patent-pending technology may be a new innovative approach to addressing a significant global need and look forward to continued discussions with drone and wind turbine market participants who see value in potentially more effective icephobic technologies.”

This is a sponsored post by GrapheneUP

Population growth and improved living standards require solutions for textiles with new functions to meet changing needs. Wherever they are used, graphene-based smart textiles provide added value in terms of improved performance or comfort. GrapheneUP®, a leading graphene company with the largest production of few-layer graphene in Europe, has developed and introduced into the market new graphene-based products for textile industry: INKGUP® Fabric and PRINTGUP®.

INKGUP® Fabric is graphene-based coating formulation for textile industry produced with few-layer graphene GUP®, designed to provide superior finishing properties. This formulation has been certified antiviral (ISO 18184:2019) also for SARS-CoV-2, antistatic and with excellent abrasion resistance and thermal regulation properties.

Several properties of textiles are improved using the formulations developed with GrapheneUP®, in particular the thermal regulation, abrasion resistance, EMI shielding, UV protection, excellent electrical conductivity, antibacterial and antiviral properties.

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced that it has signed a binding agreement with OzKem for GMG to acquire the manufacturing intellectual property and brand rights of OzKem's THERMAL-XR® coating products.

OzKem is a coatings technology company which developed the THERMAL-XR® coating system products using GMG graphene together with OzKem's base HVAC (Heating Venting and Air Conditioning) coating. GMG is an international distributor of THERMAL-XR® products with a number of global commercial demonstrations underway or initial sales completed. Following the completion of the agreement GMG will own the THERMAL-XR® brand, will buy the base coatings product from OzKem, and GMG will manufacture the THERMAL-XR® products containing GMG graphene.