Nixene Journal Volume 9 Issue 5 Article 35

This month, five years ago, we created the first issue of this journal. Since then, we have created a fresh issue every month. Each has unique content. The pace of change in the world of graphene and 2D materials has not let up, if anything the pace is accelerating. This month, graphene nanoplate powders have been used in more commercial applications. Graphene enhanced concrete continues to make the news. Nationwide Engineering and the GEIC have been busy. The foundations for a significant residential development in the UK have been laid with Concretene. A parking bay next to the GEIC building in Manchester UK has also been laid and is the first external structure laid with graphene enhanced concrete and no reinforcing material. Clear story headlines are emerging about graphene enhanced concrete; Concretene • 30% reduction in CO2 emissions • 20% reduction in overall costs Graphene powders have been used to make heat spreaders for electronics. A high-end gaming smart phone and fast access SSD device has appeared on the market this month. Normal heat spreaders are too big for compact device designs, and this is where graphene has a unique advantage because it can create thin and thermally conducting components. Still with graphene nanoplate, a team in Australia has made a pressure sensor for shoe soles. The graphene creates an electrical signal from the pressure created by the wearer. This transmits a signal to a cloud-based AI that analyses the patterns in the data and can warn of conditions such as dementia and diabetes. This being our 5th Anniversary edition we have two special features on CVD graphene. The first examines the state of the art of CVD graphene manufacturing and explores the production cost trend. And finally, we have another special feature (p.9). We normally analyse research papers and condense them down to one page. This time we have created an academic quality paper that shows where CVD graphene manufacturing could be headed. We make the case for multi-layer large-area single crystal graphene. Current thinking is that this material is just graphite. We propose that this material is something entirely new and could even be the foundation for a whole new industrial revolution. Adrian Nixon, 1st October 2021

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