Graphene Coating: introduction and market status - Page 9

Talga Resources has reported a milestone moment in a sea trial of its Talcoat graphene coating.

The company initially developed the graphene coating as an alternative to traditional coating methods that incorporate harmful chemicals and materials and first applied Talcoat to the hull of a ship back in late 2019 as part of a sea trial to test the coating’s robustness out in the tough ocean environment. A second application on a separate vessel followed soon after, and both trials remain ongoing.

Zen Graphene Solutions has announced an agreement reached on January 16th with TreborRx (Trebor) for application of its graphene-based coating on nitrile gloves sourced or produced by Trebor.

ZEN will provide Trebor with a distribution agreement for Canada, the USA and Mexico. Trebor agrees to use the coating on all gloves sold and will pay ZEN a royalty per glove coated, with a minimum first year guarantee of 100 million gloves.

Our friend Dr. Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, a well respected graphene market analyst, is launching a new service called TechBlick that is a subscription-based online and all-year round event focused on advanced materials such as graphene, 2D materials, CNTs, boron nitrides, QDs, and more.

Graphene-Info partnered with TechBlick, to provide our readers an exclusive 25% discount on the TechBlick subscription. We took advantage of this launch to discuss the graphene market and industry with Dr. Ghaffarzadeh and also discuss the new service.

Hello Kasha. How do you see the graphene market shaping up in 2021?

I have closely followed and examined the graphene industry for a full decade. The landscape has certainly changed. Many companies have come and gone, and many once considered revolutionary applications are now ruled out, but overall, the industry is now at a tipping point.

We think 2021/2022 will be a turning point, setting the industry on its growth path, despite the delays caused these past 12 months due to Covid. For some, these delays have been painful as projects were pushed back or partners or customers dropped graphene to focus on other core areas. Many undershot their growth expectations, and some had difficult cash flow situations.

Applied Graphene Materials has announced that its customer, Halo Autocare, a leading innovator in car care products, has launched Graphene Alloy Wheel Wax as part of its EZ Car Care range of products. This is the second graphene-enhanced wax polish product launched by Halo Autocare as part of its Graphene Innovation Programme, which uses AGM’s Genable® graphene dispersion technology.

The microcrystalline wax-based polish is said to be the result of the continued partnership and a rigorous testing programme delivered by Halo Autocare. This has produced a new product that delivers extended performance benefits, including improved thermal and chemical resistance to enhance coating durability further for demanding wheel and exhaust applications. The temperature resistance made possible through the new graphene nanoplatelet formulation helps with durability when alloy wheels heat up from consistent brake use. Combining these attributes with excellent barrier performance means that water spotting is also less likely to occur.

Researchers at Northwestern University and Clemson University in the U.S, along with researchers from Sejong University in Korea, have examined the origins of degradation in high energy density LIB cathode materials and developed graphene-based strategies for mitigating those degradation mechanisms and improving LIB performance.

Their research could be valuable for many emerging applications, particularly electric vehicles and grid-level energy storage for renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.

ZEN Graphene Solutions has announced that it has signed a binding letter of intent (LOI) with Trebor Rx Corp. (Trebor), a Canadian personal protective equipment mask manufacturer with an initial production facility.

This LOI includes the initial purchase of ZEN’s patent pending graphene-based viricidal coating for a minimum of 100 million masks/filters. This initial minimum order is for the first year and is subject to Health Canada approvals.

First Graphene (FGR) has announced that it has agreed with TPR² and its Australian distributor Exfire to work on the commercialization of a fire retardant coating utilizing FGR’s PureGRAPH.

First Graphene holds the global licensing rights to a graphene-based fire-retardant coating from the University of Adelaide (UoA). Development of the FireStop product has been conducted over a three-year period in collaboration with the UoA, as part of the Company’s participation as a Tier-1 member of the ARC Research Hub for Graphene Enabled Industry Transformation. Patents have progressed to National Phase and are in the examination phase in Australia, Europe and the United States of America.

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have found a possible way to evaluate the effectiveness of graphene-based protective barriers.

It’s about creating and using extra-corrosive air and observing its accelerated effect on the graphene-protected materials. Simply by imparting oxygen gas molecules with a slight kinetic energy, we could extract information about decades-worth of corrosion in a minute, said Hisato Yamaguchi, a lead Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist for this research. We create a portion of air artificially, including oxygen with a physics-defined energy distribution, and expose that to graphene-protected metals.

G2O Water Technologies (G2O) has announced an expansion into a new laboratory at Liverpool City Region’s Sci-Tech Daresbury following a £600,000 investment, including £320,000 of funding from NPIF Maven Equity Finance, managed by Maven and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.

Headquartered in Manchester, the G2O uses graphene-based coatings technology to provide high quality and cost-effective solutions to a broad range of filtration applications. G2O’s technology is used for the treatment of water waste across multiple markets, including oil, gas and industrial.

Nanotech Energy has announced the debut of Nanotech EMI Armor Paint & Sheets, graphene powered coatings and films for electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI) shielding, as well as heat management.

The EMI Shielding line currently contains six products all of which are said to be highly conductive and provide excellent external EMI/RFI protection while also preventing internal EMI/RFI leaks. The products can be sprayed, brushed, rolled or dip-coated onto various surfaces, such as glass, plastic and metal depending on the specific product used.