Graphene composites: introduction and market status - Page 43

University of Central Florida spin-off Garmor will take part in the NPE2015 Startup Garage and showcase its low-cost graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide in addition to products made with graphene oxide polymer and fiberglass composites that can be used in a variety of applications ranging from automotive, aerospace, and military to consumer electronics, medical, and construction.

The company will also share the methods developed for the smooth dispersion of graphene into both polar and non-polar plastics. According to Garmor, the company’s partnership with the University of Central Florida (UCF) has played an integral role in perfecting a method to optimize the incorporation of graphene in various polymers, composite materials and coating.

Applied Graphene Materials states that early results for the first half of the current financial year suggest a performance that meets the company's expectations, with net cash of approximately £6.6m at the period end, January 31.

According to the company, operational priorities are customer sampling, developing customer relationships, performance data generation and ongoing enhancements to the manufacturing and dispersion processes. A reported 90% of AGM’s ongoing engagements are with its three core target markets of advanced composites, coatings and functional fluids.

Dr. Elena Polyakova from Graphene 3D Lab was interviewed in IDTechEx Graphene Live! and discussed graphene composites, rivaling 2D materials and more: 

Researchers from Nanjing Forestry University and the University of Maryland have designed unique microfibers that are a hybrid of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets and one-dimensional nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) fibers.

The result is superbly aligned strong microfibers that can potentially be better than carbon fibers and are even relatively cheap. The hybrid material is much stronger than its components apart, and molecular dynamics simulations reveal a strong synergistic effect between the GO and the NFC. the 1D NFC fibers can act as a string of sorts, to hold together 2D sheets, while the GO sheets can bridge NFC fibers together for extra strong binding. 

Korean Scientist at the university of Yonsei in Seoul and the Korean Institute of Ceramic Engineering & Technology designed round graphene microparticles by spraying graphene oxide droplets into a hot solvent. This technique could pose a versatile and simple approach to making electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors with improved energy and power densities.

The researchers' particles comprise of graphene nanosheets radiating out from the center, an arrangement that increases the exposed surface area of the graphene and creates open nanochannels that can enhance charge transfer. The work was doen by passing an aqueous suspension of graphene oxide flakes through an ultrasonic nozzle, which uses sound waves to break the suspension into microdroplets. The scientists then sprayed the droplets downward into a 160° C mixture of organic solvent and ascorbic acid, a reducing agent. The hot mixture allows the graphene oxide to reduce to graphene sheets that cluster together. The water in the droplets evaporates and escapes toward the surface, which causes the unique arrangement of the nanosheets. 

The British Haydale, the Company focused on enabling technology for the commercialization of graphene, announced that its subsidiary EPL received a £261,000 Regional Growth Fund (RGF) grant by the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP).

The grant will be provided in the first quarter of 2015, and is aimed at part-financing EPL's testing of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite pipes towards commercialization of the product process in the US oil and gas industry. EPL and Haydale are working to incorporate graphene into the thermoplastic composite pipes to enhance oil and gas permeation resistance of these materials as well as increasing the materials' long term durability performance.

Cambridge Nanosystems (CNS) was spun-off from the University of Cambridge last year with with an aim to supply graphene and SWCNT materials. The company recently started building a 5-yearly ton graphene factory with the help of a £500,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board. The new factory is due to open in 2015.

Catharina Paukner, the company's chief scientist, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had on the company and its technology and also share her views on the graphene market.

Cambridge Nanosystems, a Cambridge University spin-off company, is building a vast new factory that can reportedly make up to five yearly tonnes of graphene. This might mean that graphene will be available to scientists in large quantities, which may hopefully speed up research breakthroughs. The factory is being built with the help of a £500,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board and is due to open in 2015.

Cambridge Nanosystems aims to further graphene commercialization, and have devised a method of making the material in large volumes, without degrading its quality. The company uses a patented plasma system to turn biogas into graphene. The gas itself can be natural gas (like the one that is used in housholds) or even waste gas.

Researchers from the Functional Materials research unit at the National Research Council of Italy in Bologna discovered an effective way of producing graphene-polymer composites by using an already-familiar industrial dye as a replacement to the traditional harmful solvents.

Different solvents and soaps that are nowadays used for graphene production might be appropriate for basic research, but are problematic for large-scale industrial applications. The tested industrial dye, already in wide use in polymer manufacturing, removes some of these problems by being non-toxic and eliminating the need to extract it at the end of the process.