Patents - Page 4

The wall street journal posted an interesting article and video on graphene. The article discusses the current state of research and business, possible graphene applications and the rush to patent related technologies.

The article starts with the Cambridge graphene research center and then discusses several companies and their graphene programs, including IBM, Nokia, BlueStone Global Tech, Vorbeck Materials, Lockheed Martin and Aixtron.

Researchers from Japan's Okayama University developed a new way to produce graphene oxide (GO) using microwave irradiation. The current method of producing GO uses the Hummers methods which involves oxidation with KMnO4 and NaNO3 in concentrated H2SO4 - and this requires a long reaction time and large amounts of reagents.

The researchers say that microwave irradiation of the natural graphite flakes before oxidation starts improves the efficiency of the oxidation process. The researchers filed for a patent in Japan (No.5098064) to cover this new technology.

Firmus SAM has been granted a patent for a novel electronics manufacturing method using graphene and other two-dimensional carbon crystals similar to graphene. Firmus expects to deploy graphene's potential in desalination, water treatment and contaminant removal, and will also explore other applications in electronics and other areas.

Firmus has a production facility in Warsaw, Poland and plans to use that for its graphene program.

Graphene Technologies has been issued a US patent (#8,420,042) for a process for atom-by-atom synthesis of graphene by the exothermic chemical reduction of carbon dioxide. The company says that this new process is a breakthrough in graphene production, and it represents a dramatic departure from the current methods of producing graphene, such as chemical vapor deposition and chemical exfoliation of graphite.

The company says that using this new process allows them to produce bulk volumes of pristine, few-layer graphene platelets from inexpensive, commonly available feedstock. The reaction uses carbon dioxide to oxidize magnesium at temperatures up to 7,000°F, forming nano-scale magnesium oxide and carbon. The produced graphene's morphology is controlled by process parameters (reaction temperature, thermal gradient and pressure). It's also possible to chemically functionalize or dope the produced graphene.

Researchers from Canada's Queen's University discovered a way to create graphene based materials using a simple and cheap method. The only information released by the university details how this new bottom-up method replaces some carbon atoms with boron and nitrogen atoms, which enables the use of light exposure on the compounds to grow graphene-like honeycomb lattices.

The researchers have filed for a patent on this technology. Hopefully we'll learn more about this development soon.

One of our readers sent me the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) interesting worldwide graphene patent filing analysis (from 2011), with some very nice infographics and details about graphene research. If you needed further proof about Graphene research's growing popularity, check out this graph showing yearly patent applications:

According to the IPO, the largest graphene patent applicants are Samsung, Sandisk, Harvard University, Univ Sungyunkwan and Teijin. This is rather interesting as we haven't heard any references to Sandisk's graphene research program (evidently focused on memory devices, which isn't surprising given the company's focus).

UK patent consultancy CambridgeIP researched graphene patents and they say that the UK may be falling behind in the graphene race. CambridgeIP identified 7,351 graphene patents (and patent applications), and the leading countries by graphene patents are china (2,204), US (1,754) and Korea (1,160). The UK has only 54 graphene patent applications. Back in February the UK government announced a £50 million graphene drive, which aims to bring the country back to the forefront of graphene research.

The leading research institutes (by patents) are Sungkyunkwan University (Korea, 134), Zhejiang University (China, 97), Tsinghua University (China, 92), Rice University (US, 56), MIT (US, 34) and finally Manchester University (16).

Angstron Materials have been awarded a new patent (US #8,114,373) for its next-step method that effectively exfoliates layered graphene and offers several key advantages. Using this method one can produce nano graphene platelets (NGPs) with a thickness thinner than 100nm and in many cases thinner than 10 nm or as thin as 0.34 nm to 1.02 nm.

Angstron's process does not use undesirable chemicals, time-intensive wash steps or require high exfoliation temperatures. In addition, the method does not produce contaminated waste water and its associated disposal costs.

AZ Electronic Materials have entered into a licensing and sponsored research agreements with William Marsh Rice University in the field of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) for application to electronic and advanced optical devices. AZ will gain exclusive world-wide rights to several patent families invented by Dr. James Tour and his working group at Rice, covering preparation methods and application of GNRs.

This technology could potentially enable low-cost functionalize GNR production from commercially available carbon sources such as CNTs. The method developed at Rice is reductively open CNTs to provide high quality, highly conductive GNRs. This method also provides an easy way to chemically functionalize them at their edges, which leads to greatly enhanced stability of coating formulations without deteriorating the performance. This allows the GNRs to be formulated in solvents common to electronic device manufacturing processes, which can be coated on substrates by industry-known methods. AZ also licensed Dr. Tour's high-yield approaches to graphene oxide.

Angstron Materials developed a new graphene-modified lubricant, and has been awarded a US patent for the material (US #8,222,190). The material is made by dispersing single-layer nano graphene platelets (NGPs) at a weight ratio of 0.001% to 60% (based on total fluid weight) in a fluid containing a petroleum or synthetic oil.

Angstron has demonstrated the ability of the new lubricant to provide improved thermal conductivity and friction reduction. These characteristics help extend wear performance. In addition to exceptional viscosity stability, the thermal conductivity values for the NGP-modified fluid are the highest on record for fluid materials.