Graphene companies

Imperial College London has spun out a company called 2D Nano, led by Dr. Andrius Patapas, Professor Omar Matar, Professor Camille Petit (Department of Chemical Engineering), and Dr. Jason Stafford (Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Birmingham), to pioneer the production of advanced materials like graphene, boron nitride, molybdenum disulfide, and more. 

Recently, 2D Nano reportedly secured £2 million in funding from private investors, allowing the Company to scale up production of 2D materials to several tonnes per year. Their internal research and development suggests this can lead to the manufacturing of graphene-enhanced products in excess of 100,000 t/y. The Company is particularly focused on deploying its materials in high-demand sectors such as concrete, coatings, and energy storage, where significant sustainability benefits can be realized. 

Silca, producer of bicycle accessories, has launched a graphene-based chain lubricant, Hot Wax X. Silca claims it ‘runs roughly 0.5 watts faster’ than their original Secret Chain Blend hot-melt wax, and that it can extend the chain life to 30,000km. The new lubricant comes at quite a high price of £220 per 300g tin. 

Silca previously made waves with its Secret Blend Hot Chain Wax, which gained the reputation of 'the fastest lubricant in the world'. Now, Silca found Nanene (by Versarien, which owns the Nanene brand), a commercial type of graphene, to further improve its product.

Canada-based NEO Battery Materials, focused on battery metals and materials, recently stated its plan to use graphene in its batteries.

Neo Battery Materials said in a recent announcement that it "intends to implement graphene as a conductive additive when manufacturing the silicon anode materials and as a potential candidate as a nanocoating layer to enhance cycling durability. The conductive additive improves the electrical conductivity of the active material (i.e., silicon and/or graphite) and is an essential component along with the binder and active material to fabricate the end-product anode".

Asbury Carbons, processor of carbon and graphite materials, recently announced that it has acquired Garmor, an advanced materials company based in Orlando, Florida with a patented, environmentally friendly process for the commercial production of Edge Functionalized Graphene (EFG).

In line with its strategy of growth through diversification, the acquisition of Garmor is meant to enhance Asbury’s portfolio of engineered material solutions for adhesives, asphalt, cement, coatings, as well as plastic and metal-matrix composites.

Vaulta is an Australia-based startup that focuses on graphene-enhanced battery casings. Vaulta's director, Dominic Spooner, had a chat with the Graphene-Info team to help shed some light on this fascinating young company, it's technology and plans for the future.

Dominic has over 12 years’ experience as a design engineer and has worked in a wide range of industries including renewables and batteries, defense and aerospace, consumer products, commercial products and startups. He reveals that the idea for Vaulta came to him after working directly in the field of battery design and seeing an opportunity for growth that was largely being overlooked in favor of continuing with the status quo of battery module design. Dominic founded Ember Design House in 2017 undertaking general product from R&D to production and in 2019, he founded Vaulta to focus fully on the battery casing industry and turn his product ideas into reality.

Italian sports equipment maker NRC launched new sports sunglasses that come with a graphene-enhanced frame. NRC says that the graphene increases the durability, flexibility and lightness of the frame - and so enabled NRC to design glasses that "perform far beyond all limits".

The EVEREST series of sunglasses are now shipping for €215 in Europe - and can be found at Amazon.

Zenyatta Ventures, a Canadian graphite explorer, has formed a wholly owned European subsidiary company named ZEN-tech Materials to focus on the development and commercialization activities of graphene applications and the allocation of any associated intellectual property and worldwide licensing.

Zenyatta stated that the formation of ZEN-tech is a strategic move that will provide it with a way to capture value and advance graphene application development separate from the mineral development business. Zenyatta will continue to focus on advancing the Albany graphite deposit towards production and will supply highly crystalline, purified graphite to ZEN-tech, academics and end users.

Transphene is a new graphene venture jointly owned by Carbon Sciences and Dr. Kaustav Banerjee, the will concentrate on the commercial development of a technology to mass produce graphene.

Carbon Sciences is an American-based company that develops a graphene production process technology that was originally invented at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The process transforms natural gas into commercial size sheets of graphene that can be fine-tuned with application-specific electrical and materials properties. Carbon Sciences is a public company trading on the NASDAQ (OTC:CABN). 

The UK's National Graphene Institute (NGI), to be opened in March 2015, teams up with yet another company, Morgan Advanced Materials, to become project partners and collaborate in graphene research. The partnership with Morgan Advanced Materials is meant to improve the prospects of pushing forward graphene commercial use. 

This agreement follows last month's similar agreement between the NGI and 2-DTech. Both 2-DTech and Morgan Advanced Materials joined 30 other partners currently working on graphene research and commercialization projects with the University of Manchester.