Graphene Oxide: Introduction and Market News - Page 16

Norway-based Graphene Oxide developer Abalonyx says that there is a strong interest in graphene oxide (GO) solutions in the research community, across a wide range of applications. While first industrial adoption is "on the horizon", Abalonyx estimates that industry acceptance is strongly related to cost.

Abalonyx' current production cost is around €800 per Kg (dry weight basis) - since the Company's GO is currently used by researchers and early R&D efforts. Abalonyx estimates that as production volume goes up, the price of production could reach around 22 Euro / Kg - which will make GO applicable for areas such as concrete and asphalt. The projection is based on the company's own extrapolation of today's capacity and the effect of full-automation. The cost does not include waste handling (although Abalonyx believes that it will be able to handle that at no cost). Abalonyx is currently selling its GO at €1,300 - €4,000 per Kg depending on amount and grade (€1.3 - €4 per gram).

Researchers from Virginia Tech and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a new way to 3D print with graphene. Graphene has previously been used in extrusion-based processes to print single sheets and basic structures at a resolution of around 100 microns, but this latest research shows it is also possible to use a stereolithography-based technique to print pretty much any desired structure down to 10 microns, close to the size of actual graphene sheets. The ability to 3D print functional parts in graphene could benefit many industries and products.

Now a designer can design three-dimensional topology comprised of interconnected graphene sheets, said Xiaoyu Rayne Zheng, assistant professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering and director of the Advanced Manufacturing and Metamaterials Lab. This new design and manufacturing freedom will lead to optimization of strength, conductivity, mass transport, strength, and weight density that are not achievable in graphene aerogels.

Graphene has many potential applications in the audio industry, and many companies have recently released graphene-enhanced audio devices (including headphones, earphones and interconnects). Ari Pinkas, the co-founder of Ora Graphene Audio, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had for him regarding the audio industry, graphene adoption, and the company's own graphene oxide based driver technology.

Q: Hello Ari, thank you for the interview. How long has Ora been involved in graphene research?

While Ora’s graphene technology is based on 2013 research done at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, our scientists have been working with the ‘wonder material’ for over a decade. Before founding the company, Ora’s technical team worked with General Motors on applying graphene oxide to battery anodes for electric vehicles at McGill. Earlier in his career, Ora’s VP Technology, Sergii Tutashkonko, was in Nagoya, Japan, hard at work applying CVD graphene to solar cells.

A*STAR researchers have found that incorporating organic materials into lithium ion batteries could lower their cost and make them more environmentally friendly. The team has developed an organic-based battery cathode that has significantly improved electrochemical performance compared to previous organic cathode materials. The new material is also robust, remaining stable over thousands of battery charge/discharge cycles.

An electron-deficient, rigid organic molecule called hexaazatrinaphthalene (HATN) was previously investigated as an organic cathode material for lithium ion batteries. However, its promising initial performance declined rapidly during use, because the molecule began to dissolve into the battery’s liquid electrolyte. A new cathode material, in which HATN was combined with graphene oxide in an attempt to prevent the organic material from dissolving, has now been developed by Yugen Zhang and his colleagues from the A*STAR Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

Today we published new versions of all our graphene market reports. Graphene-Info provides comprehensive niche graphene market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about these niche markets. The reports are now updated to July 2018.

The Graphene Batteries Market Report:

• The advantages using graphene batteries
• The different ways graphene can be used in batteries
• Various types of graphene materials
• What's on the market today
• Detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode material
• Personal contact details into most graphene developers

The report package provides a good introduction to the graphene battery - present and future. It includes a list of all graphene companies involved with batteries and gives detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode materials and contact details into most graphene developers. Read more here!

Washington State University researchers have attempted to find a solution to the problem of fly ash, a waste product of coal-based electricity generation and a known environmental and waste management issue. Xianming Shi, associate professor in WSU's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and graduate student Gang Xu, have used graphene in their new method that makes use of fly ash for the production of concrete.

The durable new concrete eliminates the use of cement, which is known to be harmful to the environment. Instead of cement, the fly ash is used as a binder in the concrete. By doing this, Shi and Xu are able to tackle two environmental issues with one solution.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, have developed a graphene assembled film that has over 60% higher thermal conductivity than graphite film despite the fact that graphite consists of many layers of graphene. The graphene film shows great potential as a novel heat spreading material for form-factor driven electronics and other high power-driven systems. The IP of the high-quality manufacturing process for the graphene film belongs to SHT Smart High Tech AB, a spin-off company from Chalmers, which is going to focus on the commercialization of the technology.

Until now, many scientists in the graphene research community have assumed that graphene assembled film cannot have higher thermal conductivity than graphite film. Single layer graphene has a thermal conductivity between 3500 and 5000 W/mK. If you put several graphene layers together, then it theoretically becomes graphite.

Researchers associated with the Graphene Flagship have reported overcoming the theoretical limiting performance of membranes in gas separation. This collaborative research from CNR, University of Bologna and Graphene-XT has potential applications in hydrogen purification and carbon capture and storage.

The team explains that polymer-based membranes for gas separation have a trade-off between high gas permeability and high gas selectivity, the so-called Robeson upper bound. By combining individual graphene oxide sheets with polymer spacers, in a sandwich style structure, the researchers have been able to overcome this limit, separating gas quickly and efficiently.

Researchers at the Austraila-based UNSW have developed a graphene-based material that could revolutionize moisture control in applications as diverse as electronics, packaging and air conditioning and which could also be used to keep footwear fresh.

The new dessicant, made from graphene oxide, is reported to significantly outperform current drying agents, and is twice as absorbent as the industry standard, silica gel. This is a stable new material that shows significant gains in adsorption capacity over conventional desiccants, says the team.

In November 2017, after years of work, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released its first graphene standard, the ISO/TS 80004-13:2017. The effort was led by the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

We recently discussed this interesting and important development with the NPL's Dr. Andrew J. Pollard. Dr. Andrew leads the NPL Surface and Nanoanalysis Group's research into the structural and chemical characterization of graphene and related 2D materials, and he is also a member of the ISO working group 'Measurement and Characterization' within the 'Nanotechnologies' Technical Committee (TC229), and a UK nominated expert for the international graphene standards.

Hello Andy, and thank you for this interview. We know that NPL pioneered the effort in the new ISO standard, can you tell us why do you believe such standards are of vital importance?

As a new material that has spawned an emerging industry, graphene has the potential to improve many of the products we all use every day. However, for industry around the world to be able to develop innovative products with this two-dimensional material, they need to know what the properties actually are of the materials they are using.