Graphene composites: introduction and market status - Page 40

Haydale reported their financial results for 2015 - revenues reached £644,000 (up from £19,000 in 2014) while total income (which includes government grants) reached £1.48 million (up from £129,000). Most of the increase in income came from EPL Composites (now renamed Haydale Composite Solutions, or HCS) - which generated £1.18 million in income.

Haydale is still losing money - in fact the EBITDA loss rose to £2.38 million (up from a loss of £1.96 million in 2014). Haydale ended the year with only £2.05 million in cash (down from £5.68 million at the end of 2014) - but the company also announced a new share issue that will bring in about £5.2 million. Haydale will sell 3.51 million shares at 160p a share (a 5% discount on the average closing price of Haydale shares in the past 20 days).

Thomas Swan has announced the availability of two new graphene grades: Elicarb Electrical Grade Graphene Powder for conductive inks and Elicarb Materials Grade Graphene Powder for composites & plastics. In combination with the company's existing products of Elicarb Premium Grade Graphene Powder and Elicarb Premium Grade Graphene Dispersion (AQ) which are meant for electronics & displays applications, the company now provides a full suite of graphene products.

Thomas Swan states that it continues to focus on reliably delivering high quality, consistent graphene products via the Direct Exfoliation process which extracts graphene directly from graphite raw materials. By tuning its extraction process, the company can produce graphene products that range from the Few Layer Graphene through to the Multi-Layer graphene nanoplatelet. 

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.

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.

A research partnership between the University of Central Lancashire’s College of Science and Technology and Civic Drone Center, and the University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute yielded a graphene-enhanced UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle).

A test flight of the UAV was recently carried out, aiming to trial the graphene within the UAV to test its robustness, aerodynamic properties and how it can be integrated into the manufacturing process. The researchers work to explore how graphene can be integrated within the aerospace industry, and collaborating with the National Graphene Institute provided the partners with an opportunity to conduct research with a viable real-world application.

Haydale has signed a letter of intent with Huntsman Advanced Materials, a leading global chemical solutions provider, to use the company’s graphene enabling technology together with Huntsman’s ARALDITE resins and heavy duty adhesives to create enhanced composites. 

The agreed first step will be the development of a graphene enabled ‘master batch’ which will be used for development and validation. The companies hope that this work might open up the potential for a whole new range of advanced composite materials and products with enhanced performance and lower cost.

Haydale's subsidiary Haydale Composite Solutions (HCS), has entered into a collaborative 18 month research project awarded and managed by the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP) and involves two end users, Airbus UK and BAE Systems. The research project aims to produce a material less likely to be damaged by lightning strike on an aircraft.

Carbon fiber composites are used extensively in aircraft applications such as fuselages, leading edges and wing surfaces. However, because the carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composite materials are poor conductors of electricity they are prone to damage caused by lightning strike. The aim of this new project is to develop highly electrically conductive epoxy resins through the addition of functionalized graphene which, when combined with conductive carbon fiber, is expected to result in a highly conductive carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composite material capable of withstanding lightning strike.

A few weeks ago we reported on a new IDTechEx market report, in which they predict that the graphene market will reach nearly $200 million by 2026, with the estimation that the largest sectors will be composites, energy applications and graphene coatings.

We were very interested in learning more, and Dr Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, IDTechEx's head of consulting was kind enough to answer a few questions and explain the company's view on the graphene market.

Q: IDTechEx has been following graphene for a long time with dedicated events and reports. Why is this new material interesting for IDTechEx?

We have a long track record of analyzing emerging advanced materials such as quantum dots, CNTs, Ag nanostructures, silicon nanostructures, OLED materials, etc. We were however pulled into the world of graphene by our clients’ questions. Once in, we soon realized that there is a big synergy between graphene and our events. in fact, our events on supercapacitors and printed electronics were the right near-term addressable market for graphene, and that is why we managed to rapidly build up the largest business-focused event on graphene. Our events on graphene are held in the USA and Europe each year see www.IDTechEx.com/usa.

A collaboration between researchers from Cardiff University and Haydale conducted a study focused on component-scale hierarchical composites using nanocarbons, mainly graphene and CNTs. The team's main aim was to explore techniques for component-scale manufacture of hierarchical composites by liquid infusion.

A plasma process, developed by Haydale, was adopted for controllable functionalization of large batches of nanocarbons (100s of grams) prior to mixing with epoxy resin. A rheological study indicated that filler morphology, functionalization and fill weight all have an effect on epoxy resin viscosity. Using these developed nanocomposite resins, a resin infusion under flexible tooling (RIFT) technique was developed. Resin flow studies informed an optimum setup that facilitated full wet-out of large area UD carbon fibre laminates and the resulting materials showed significant improvements in mechanical properties, demonstrating up to ~50% increase in compression after impact (CAI) properties.

Scientists at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with Haydale, studied the effects of adding nanoscale reinforcements like graphene nanoplatelets and CNTs to metals in hopes of improving their through-thickness.

They discovered that through-thickness could indeed be greatly improved, thus solving a major hindrance of composites that are otherwise known as having many superior properties. The results of this study may benefit fields that require light materials that are also durable, like the aerospace industry.