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Nixene Journal Volume 9 Issue 5 Article 25
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Vol 6 Issue 2
A graphene toaster was demonstrated for the first time at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas by Korean company Graphene Square. This may not sound like a world changing invention, but it is something worth paying attention to because this is a rare application for chemical vapour deposition (CVD) graphene in a consumer electronics device. Until now, CVD graphene has been used in very small pieces in sensors. This toaster has a piece of CVD graphene on the top and bottom glass panels making a transparent infrared grill. The graphene is made at a scale of 200mm x 150mm and this tells us a that the company has a viable CVD roll to roll process. The process can make graphene at this scale and also provides the capability to separate the graphene from the forming substrate to other surfaces, in this case glass. The next step is to do this commercially. Graphene Square admits this is still at least a year away. This is still impressive progress and tells us that the industrial manufacture of CVD graphene is developing quickly. CVD graphene is also in the news this month. British company Paragraf announced through Queen Mary University, London, that they can create graphene at wafer scale, and this could be a replacement for indium tin oxide (ITO). This was picked up by technology blogs around the world, and graphene manufacturer Versarien felt obliged to disclose it is working on a similar project with a graphene manufacturer in Korea. These announcements about CVD graphene touchscreens sound impressive. However, as far as we can tell from the current state of the art, the economic and technical cases are not sufficiently proven to convince us we will see this technology in the immediate future. The term ‘bottom-up graphene’ used to refer to CVD graphene assembled atom by atom. Graphene powder manufacturing has been evolving rapidly over the last few years and can now be made by atomic assembly methods too. We have summarised the various methods in our special feature. We also look at the implications for competitive activity, as these new manufacturing methods meet the new market dynamics driving the sustainability agenda. While we cannot state which individual companies will achieve success, we can make some predictions about the characteristics successful graphene powder manufacturers will need to have. We hope you agree this makes for fascinating reading along with the rest of the compelling content this issue. Adrian Nixon, 1st February 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 6 Issue 5
Over the past five years, we have been paying attention to how graphene can improve battery technology. The market focus has been on batteries for electric vehicles. Graphene has been used in the electrodes, and this has made improvements in charging time and battery life. However, energy density has not been improved. Energy density is the amount of energy that can be squeezed into a given volume or mass. This is important for electric vehicles because the higher the energy density, the further a vehicle can travel for a given quantity of batteries. MIT have been paying attention to this battery development dynamic. A spin out company from the university called PolyJoule has developed a new battery (p. 21). This has even poorer energy density, one fifth that of lithium-ion technology, so this is not going to be used for electric vehicles. The MIT researchers have spotted another market – grid storage. These new batteries appear to be ideal for grid storage applications. They charge and discharge rapidly have a long battery life, do not require cooling, and do not need lithium and toxic heavy metals. These batteries are a new intermediate-type between lithium ion and lead-acid technology. We will pay closer attention to this company in the future because storing electricity from renewables such as wind and solar power requires effective grid storage batteries. Also in this issue, Debbie interviewed the CEO of Ceylon Graphene Technologies. This company has local access to some of the highest quality graphite in the world and is very well equipped to process and develop this into high quality graphene powders (p. 7). The company is actively working on new products and extending the value chain towards the market applications. It will be fascinating to see the results of this activity in the market in the coming years. Yet more fascinating research is being published. You may recall that Debbie met Chris Griggs and Sarah Grace Zetterholm of the US Army ERDC (Vol 5 iss 12, p.10). Their team has developed a graphene filter that removes the toxin produced by algal blooms. This filter cleans up poisoned water that is harmful to humans and fish(p.13) Staying with the biology theme, researchers in the Netherlands have developed a graphene sensor that can listen to the sounds made by individual bacteria. This sensor could find uses exploring the effectiveness of antibiotics with unprecedented precision. Another team in the Netherlands has been developing graphene sensors for testing in space. SpaceX launched these sensors this month. The sensors are now approaching a sun synchronous orbit where their performance will be evaluated. Graphene really is out of this world, and as usual there is so much more to read in this issue. Adrian Nixon, 1st May 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 6 Issue 9
Andre Geim’s work appears twice in this issue. He has been working with researchers in China and developed a straightforward method of recovering metallic gold from e-waste. This starts with an e-waste liquid stream where the precious metals have been dissolved in acid. Reduced graphene oxide powder (rGO) is mixed with this waste stream. rGO is composed of nanoplates with oxygen containing groups around the edges and a graphene surface in the middle. The groups round the edge help the nanoplate mix with the water in the waste and the graphene surface attracts and reduces the gold ions in solution to solid gold metal. It is surprisingly straightforward. The process is also extremely efficient, recovering nearly 100% of the gold even when vanishingly small amounts of gold is present. Andre was also interviewed by Forbes magazine this month. He was asked how he manages to be so innovative when others are less so. He replied that having a wide range of interests was a key part of his success: “Too many people move from scientific cradle to scientific coffin without deviation” …and went on to say: “You have to enrich yourself, to improve your chances to find something new and interesting that other people didn't find before” Not only a recipe for success in science but a good philosophy for making our own luck for the rest of us too. Elsewhere in this issue, articles cover topics such as the renewed investor interest in graphene companies. Over £11million has been invested in graphene companies this month. Researchers have turned graphene into diamond, and others have been discovering more about the electrical properties of twisted layer graphene. In Malaysia, the traditional industry of natural rubber harvesting is exploring creating high altitude balloons made with graphene enhanced rubber to launch satellites into low earth orbit. Quite a leap forward. Read on and enrich yourselves… Adrian Nixon 1st September 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 5 Issue 8
I have learned that news headlines which end with a question mark are nearly always less interesting than those that do not. A case in point: An article was posted at the start of the month asking “Has the funding for graphene dried up?” (p.48). On the same day, Estonian graphene supercapacitor manufacturer Skeleton announced it has secured over €120million in funding over the past 12 months (p.49). This probably makes Skeleton the most commercially successful application for graphene so far. Other companies prefer to avoid the limelight and operate in secret until they are ready to come out into the open. Sometimes their public disclosure is deliberate. Charmgraphene announced this month they are in the roll-to-roll graphene manufacturing business and can make graphene at speeds of 2m per minute and lengths up to 1km (p.36). Sometimes the disclosure is accidental, as might be the case with an academic paper being published by one of the researchers working with graphene photonics company CamGraPhIC (p.21 and p.33). We don’t need to be as concerned with secrecy, quite the reverse. Our purpose is to inform you of the activity we are monitoring in this fast-moving field, special features are part of the way we do this. This issue is the first time Debbie, Rob and I have all written special features in one edition. Debbie has been interviewing Graphene Star. They have developed a very high solids content (25% solids) graphene dispersion that is water based and appears to be very stable. The company has been creating novel coatings with a traditional paint company in the UK. The combination of the old and new seems to be working well for both companies. My contribution is a look at the state of the art of industrial CVD graphene manufacturing. If you ever wondered what the ‘Market, Application and Product Type’ keywords tables are for, then Rob’s special feature will give you part of the answer. We are creating a structured keyword database that builds with each journal issue. This is primary data; you will not find this anywhere else. Rob has been analysing the instances of our keywords over time to explore the market application trends for graphene products since 2017. The results are revealing and show where the global applications development has been and will be for the near future. And, in case you were wondering, yes, Rob’s analysis does include supercapacitors. This appears in the top ten of applications. Dear Reader, we have done more sorting of the signal from the noise, as usual there is so much more to read in this issue. Adrian Nixon, 1st August 2021£45.00 View product
