Graphene CVD sheets - updates and market status - Page 17

Graphen Laboratories has become Moorfield's exclusive US distributer for their nanoCVD systems. Those new systems (launched in Europe in early 2013) enable easy, R&D scale production of CVD graphene and carbon nanotubes on a variety of substrates. The systems will be distributed by Graphene Laboratories via Graphene Supermarket.

The nanoCVD range consists of compact yet powerful units which include features such as low thermal mass heater stages, cold-walled reaction chambers and fully automatic controls enable rapid synthesis. The primary focus of these systems is in the academic sector, but Moorfield says that the nanoCVD systems have also proven attractive for industrial product development.

CVD Equipment released their financial results for Q2 2013 - $4.8 million in revenue (up 40% from Q2 2012) and a net income of $874K (compared to a net loss of $440K in Q2 2012). CVD moved to a new, significantly larger facility which reduced their order levels (the current order backlog is $5.5 million).

CVD says they received orders for two large graphene systems - one for a square 300mm substrate and the other for a round 200 mm substrate. The company says that their application laboratory is playing an important part in their ability to deliver next generation equipment that meets the evolving needs of this growing material area.

IBM researchers have developed a graphene-based infrared detector, driven by intrinsic plasmons. This new design proved to be much more photo-responsive compared to non-plasmonic graphene detectors.

The researchers used CVD to grow graphene on copper foil. The copper was etched away and the graphene sheet was transferred to a silicon/silicon-oxide chip. The researchers patterned graphene ribbons (widths of 80 to 200 nm).

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%).

Researchers from Rice University managed to synthesize graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) on metal from the bottom up (atom by atom). They call these Graphene onion rings and you can see why from the image below:

The researchers explain that usually, when growing graphene using CVD, the deposition starts as one atom attach it self to a speck of dust or a bump on the metal substrate. The other atoms join in (this is called nucleation) to join the familiar graphene pattern. This time the researchers used a high pressure hyrdogen-rich environment, and this produced the first rings. In this case, the entire edge of the first ring becomes a nucleation site and a new sheet starts under the first graphene sheet.

Michigen based XG Sciences uses Michigan State University developed technology to develop and produce Graphene Nanoplatelets, or xGnPs. Those short stacks of graphene sheets made through a proprietary manufacturing process can be used to replace carbon nanotubes - at a lower cost.

Michael Knox, the company's co-founder and CEO was kind enough to answer a few questions we had. During the previous 25 years, Mr. Knox has been involved in a number of different businesses as an owner or an officer. Mr. Knox has a BA in Economics and an MBA in Finance from the University of Minnesota.

Researchers from China's Beijing Institute of Technology developed new supercapacitors based on electrodes made from graphene quantum dot (GQD) assemblies on horizontally aligned carbon nanotubes (HACNTs). They say that adding the GQD results in more than 200% capacitance improvement compared to bare HACNT electrodes.

To fabricate these devices, the researcher synthesized super-long vertically aligned CNTs (VACNT) (using water-assisted CVD) and then transformed hem into HACNTs using a roller. The GQD were uniformly anchored on the HACNTs using an electrochemical deposition process. The composite film that was producing in this method was assembled in a symmetrical two-electrode configuration.

Researchers from Rice University and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) found a new method to control the growth of uniform atomic layers of molybdenum disulfide (MDS), a semiconductor together with graphene can be used to make 2D electronic devices. Unlike graphene, MDS has a band gap.

The researchers goal is to create large MDS sheets (using CVD) and then use it together with graphene and the insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) to form field-effect transistors, integrated logic circuits, photodetectors and flexible optoelectronics. MD5 isn't flat - it's actually a stack, with a layer of molybdenum atoms between two layers of sulfur atoms. It's a challenge to actually bind these three materials together.

Incubation Alliance (InALA), a Japanese company established in 2007 to manufacture and sale carbon materials) developed a new process to mass produce graphene. The company is using a proprietary high speed CVD process to mass-synthesize graphene without the use of substrates, catalysts, or stripping. The results of this process is a graphene mass that they call Graphene Flower (as it resembles flower petal in shape).

Graphene Flowers (which are 3D materials) are disperse in various solvents. This basically creates regular 2D graphene materials in dispersion. Those materials are being sold by InALA today to customers. The company does not offer any graphene sheets on a substrate, only graphene dispersion.

Bluestone Global Tech (BGT) was founded in 2011 in New York with an aim to produce graphene. The company offers high-quality, fully customizable graphene on several substrates (Quartz, Copper, Silicon and others). BGT's CEO, Dr. Chung Ping Lai, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had about the company's business and technology.

Dr. Lai became BGT's CEO in November 2012. Previously he worked with Taiwan's ITRI institute, Veeco, Applied films and other companies. Dr. Lai received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Ceramics Science and Engineering of Rutgers University in 1992.