Aerospace - Page 6

Graphene Flagship partners Aernnova, Grupo Antolin-Ingenieria and Airbus have produced a leading edge for the Airbus A350 horizontal tail plane using graphene-enhanced composites. As the first part of the tail plane to contact air, the leading edge is subjected to extreme temperatures caused by compressive heating of the air ahead of the wing. Thus, it must possess excellent mechanical and thermal properties.

Aernnova supplied the resin to Grupo Antolin-Ingenieria who added graphene directly to the resin and applied milling forces, said Ana Reguero of Aernnova. This creates small graphene particles an important step to get good graphene infiltration within the resin, avoiding unwanted impurities, such as solvents, which can alter the viscosity of the resin. It is important to maintain the correct viscosity of the resin to ensure the optimal outcome during the resin transfer molding of the leading edge.

Versarien has announced its plans to enter an agreement with a large state-owned Chinese aerospace company. The Partner is said to mainly be engaged in the research, design, manufacture and operation of various aerospace systems.

The agreement details the parties' desire to collaborate and ultimately enter into a strategic cooperation covering research, development and manufacturing in order to accelerate the industrialization and market for graphene and other Versarien 2D materials, including Hexotene, in the Chinese aerospace sector. This will include exploring their uses within the fields of, amongst others, microwave and electromagnetic radiation shielding, heat dispersion coatings, 3D printing and flexible wearable devices.

Zenyatta Ventures has announced its plans to raise up to $3,000,000 CAD (around $2,240,000 USD) on a non-brokered private placement basis. The proceeds will be used for bulk sampling, environmental assessment and community engagement.

Zentayya also provided an update on its graphene market development work ,which has led to the creation of five significant potential market verticals for the Company which include aerospace, biomedical, water treatment, transportation and civil engineering.

Graphene Flagship partners Thales and M-SOLV have developed a large-scale spray coating tool, reportedly capable of meeting the high volume manufacturing requirements for high power graphene supercapacitors to be used in aerospace applications.

Thales has been working on incorporating graphene into supercapacitors since the start of the Graphene Flagship and has been able to significantly increase the storage potential of supercapacitor devices. "Using graphene, we have been able to increase the power of supercapacitors by five times. We deposited our supercapacitors using spray coating, enabling us to use a variety of substrates, thus allowing us to develop flexible, high power supercapacitors," said Dr. Paolo Bondavalli, Thales Research and Technology.

Versarien has announced that it has received an order for the supply of Versarien's graphene nano platelets to a design and manufacturing company for use in fire retardant aircraft interior parts for a major global airline.

The order is for an initial 1 kg of the Company's graphene nano platelets and it is anticipated that further orders will be received to fulfill the end-customers' contract. The specific aircraft interior parts have reportedly gained the necessary certification from a USA-based, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certified, fire testing laboratory.

Recently, several reports have popped up regarding an unknown number of China’s Z-10 air-to-ground attack helicopters that have been upgraded with graphene to serve as an extra layer of protection. For example, Asia Times reported that "the People’s Liberation Army’s Z-10 attack helicopter is now equipped with extra armor made with the lightweight, structurally rigid graphene semimetal, the latest addition to protect the chopper’s airframe without eating into its effective payload".

A model of the Z-10 assault helicopter inside Tiananmen Square in Beijing

Several websites mentioned a video that appeared on China Central Television showing one of the helicopters with "an extra armor module near its tandem cockpit" touch down after a flight. The video has not been independently verified for authenticity, and Beijing is known to keep its military secrets well under wraps.

The Graphene-Info team attended this year's Graphene Week, organized by the Graphene Flagship in San Sebastian, Spain, 10-14 September 2018. The event attracted over 600 visitors from all over the world, and was extremely well organized.

While the talks and lectures were clearly scientifically-oriented, the commercial angle was also evident and many institutes and companies were there to show their recent product advancements. The Graphene Flagship's booth held a fascinating array of exhibits: graphene-enhanced retina and neural prosthesis (biomedical devices) by the ICN2 as a part of Braincom, Airbus' graphene composite for the leading edge of the tail of the Airbus A350, Nokia, Ericsson and AMO's graphene-based modulators and photodetectors for optical communications, a prosthetic robotic hand enhanced with graphene nerve sensors by the IIT, University of Cambridge's insole graphene-based pressure sensor and more.

Zenyatta Ventures has announced that it will be commencing a new research collaboration with the University of British Columbia (UBC)-Okanagan Campus and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR, the German Aerospace Center) to investigate the potential use of Albany Graphite for graphene and graphene oxide in new composite materials.

Dr. Lukas Bichler, who will be leading the composite development project, said: UBC researchers have established a partnership with DLR, which seeks to provide unique educational and research opportunities for future engineers. Also, the partners bring together Canadian and European industry partners and allow effective technology transfer and rapid innovation.

The Centre for Advanced Two-Dimensional Materials (CA2DM) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has joined forces with US-based aerospace company Boreal Space to test the properties of graphene after it has been launched into the stratosphere. The results could provide insights into how graphene could be used for space and satellite technologies.

"Graphene's usefulness on Earth has already been established in the last decade. It is now an opportune time to expand its prospects for use in space applications—an area touted as being the most challenging to modern technology—and shift the paradigm of materials science. Space is the final frontier for graphene research, and I believe this is the first time that graphene has entered the stratosphere," said project leader Professor Antonio Castro Neto, Director of NUS CA2DM.

Aselsan, a leading Turkish defense company that produces military radios and defense electronic systems for the Turkish Armed Forces, has reportedly designed graphene-based OLED screen prototypes with what is said by the Company to be the highest pixel resolution yet achieved.

The project produced monochrome miniature screens that can function without backlighting, and the results of the graphene-based OLED screen development effort were presented at the Eurodisplay Conference in Berlin.