We recently reported that U.S-based Alliance Rubber signed an agreement with University of Sussex to study how graphene could be used in rubber products. Now, Zenyatta Ventures and said Alliance Rubber and the University of Sussex have announced a collaboration program to develop enhanced rubber products.
Alliance manufactures 2,200 products and markets them in 55 countries. It is funding research at Sussex to develop enhanced new rubber products using graphene, focusing on rubber sensor products that will hold credit and debit cards to prevent hacking of information stored on the chip. The Alliance program will also focus on a rubber sensor product attached to food produce that changes color when the produce item reaches a set temperature or after a certain amount of time passes since harvest. This product can also act as a bar code on produce in grocery stores.
Separately from the above Alliance project, Zenyatta will also be working with a team of scientists at Sussex using graphene produced from Zenyatta graphite on other projects such as: Motion Sensors (creating a flexible rubber-graphene sensor that can detect motions as subtle as those associated with breathing and pulse for healthcare monitors and sportswear use), emulsions (where the control of electrical and thermal properties is critical for performance), energy storage devices (to develop supercapacitor devices based on a self-assembly of nanomaterials to produce electrode structures and a better battery using graphene) and applications for the automotive Industry (to develop more sensitive airbags and vehicle batteries made with stacked graphene for faster charging and more energy).