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Nixene Journal Volume 9 Issue 5 Special Feature 1
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Vol 6 Issue 12
This month Time Magazine named the graphene kitchen styler as one of the best inventions of 2022. This is the graphene cooker we mentioned back in vol 6 iss 2 p.30. The company behind this invention, Graphene Square, announced another product this month, the graphene virtual fireplace radiator. Both devices use large area chemical vapour deposition (CVD) graphene. The virtual fireplace radiator has already won another innovation award and will make its debut at the consumer electronics show in Los Angeles, USA in January 2023. The immediate reaction from people working in the graphene and 2D materials community has been to greet these announcements with a wry smile. My first reaction was to dismiss this as gimmickry as well. Then I thought a little more. You will know, dear reader, that great advances have been made developing manufacturing methods for large area sheet graphene using the CVD technique. Production machines exist in Europe, America, and Asia, some of which can make graphene at speeds of 2m/min and lengths of up to one kilometre (vol 5 iss 8 p.36). A manufacturing business survives by making things and then selling them at a profit. These companies have solved the science and engineering problems to create impressive production capabilities. This is only half of the survival equation. They must develop equally impressive marketing and sales operations to match. In this issue we notice that USA based manufacturer General Graphene is still struggling to find the applications that will be the foundation for the marketing and sales operation. Meanwhile Graphene Square, from South Korea is making cookers and toasters. The reason they are launching apparently trivial products is because they need to educate the market by getting the message out to potential customers that CVD graphene is real, it can be manufactured at scale and integrated into everyday products. This message will not be lost on manufactures in the automotive and aerospace sectors as well as consumer electronics. And consider this, Time Magazine has over three million subscribers, and a wider reach online. Also in this issue, graphene powder manufacturer, Applied Graphene Materials has announced it is in financial trouble. It will run out of cash at the end of January 2023 unless it can find cash from somewhere. The reason for its troubles? A lack of success finding market applications for its graphene that will generate profitable sales. A reminder to us all that developing sophisticated products is only part of the road to success. Making customers aware of the value of your product is key because if you get this right, they will prize your offering as much as you do, and this will lead to profitable sales and a sustainable business. Adrian Nixon 1st December 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 5 Issue 4
I need to start this month’s issue with a correction. In the last issue (Vol 5 iss 3 p.13) I stated that Kostya was moving from Singapore to Russia. Thanks to our rather well-informed readership, I have been told that Kostya is indeed taking up the position of head of the Brain and Consciousness Research Centre in Moscow, Russia. However, he is not leaving the National University of Singapore. Onward with our usual Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity. Normal ABC service resumes. This month we had a meeting with Prof. James Tour and the GEIC. Thanks Debbie. The work on Flash Graphene (FG) is advancing faster than we realised. Prof. Tour testified to Congress about the benefits graphene can bring to buildings and infrastructure in the USA. He testified to Congress in 2017 and now said “Four years later I’m here to report that the future has arrived” (see page 21). You will know that FG can be made from anything that contains carbon. Waste plastic is a favourite (Vol 4 iss 8 p.9). We learned that Flash Graphene can now also be made from furnace black, the by-product from the leading ‘green’ manufacturing process for Hydrogen (see page 22). The Rice University laboratories and spin out company, Universal Matter, are working on the production of Flash Graphene. The pace is fast. Every nine weeks doubles the scale at which FG can be made. Flash Graphene is something we’ll watch closely. If the team can continue to scale up the process it has the potential to make many other methods for making graphene powders obsolete. We have three special features this month. A review the state of the industry for manufacturing large scale sheet graphene, and interviews with two graphene company business leaders, Maví Figueres and Dylan Banks. Such is the pace of change, while we were writing the special feature, General Graphene sent samples of their monolayer and multilayer graphene to the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC). The samples will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for testing. We have the first pictures of these large-scale graphene samples in this issue (see page 29) It is worth noting that Graphene has gone from impossible to industrial in just 17 years. Astonishing. Other things to draw your attention to include an emerging controversy with graphene facemasks in Canada (see page 30) and new perovskite 2D materials start to feature in this issue. You’ll discover more as you read on. Adrian Nixon, 1st April 2021£45.00 View product -
Vol 6 Issue 10
Dear reader, you will know that we are tracking the progress of the biggest graphene companies in the world. Levidian is the biggest on paper with their announced £700 million ($780 m USD) contract with the UAE (vol 6 iss 6 p.26). The other company is Skeleton Technologies who make graphene enhanced supercapacitors for transport systems. They have been making steady progress over the past few years and have now announced a new €220 million ($215 m USD) super factory that will open in Germany in 2024. This will give the company an order of magnitude increase in production capacity (p.32 of this issue). Skeleton have also announced they have been awarded the contract to supply supercapacitors for the latest metro units in the Spanish city of Grenada (p.22). Further industrial progress is being made in the USA. Cardea Bio is a manufacturer of graphene field effect transistor biosensors. Essentially these are lab-on-a-chip devices that will give an instant read out of medical conditions from a sample of body fluids. The company has mastered the art of mass production and its factories can produce up to 20,000 graphene sensors per month. They also report that next year they will have produced their millionth biosensor. This company is shaping up to be a formidable presence in the graphene biosensor market. On the research and technical side, there has been much progress in the quality control of graphene. Terrance Barkan convened a webinar of metrology experts from world class institutions in the UK, USA and South America. The Raman spectroscopy masterclass is well worth viewing if you need to understand how the quality of graphene is measured by this technique and its limitations (p.15). By coincidence this month researchers in India have developed a new technique for reliably measuring the number of layers of graphene in a sample. Rather than use an expensive raman spectrometer, they have found a much cheaper optical microscope can provide similar information (p.17). In the UK, researchers have published a literature review of sustainable fibres for polymer composites. The work clearly shows why sustainable natural fibres are not being adopted to replace synthetic fibres. Natural fibres are an order of magnitude weaker than their synthetic counterparts. There is room for optimism though. The study shows that graphene can enhance the strength of natural fibres in polymer composites and shows there is one primary candidate natural fibre that, with graphene, just might challenge the supremacy of synthetic fibres (p.18). You can find out about this and much more in this fascinating issue. Dear reader, I invite you to read on… Adrian Nixon 1st October 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 5 Issue 3
Graphene and 2D materials are still creating scientific progress and the pace is if anything speeding up. You may recall from 2018 that MIT discovered twisted bilayer graphene displayed superconductivity. Andre Geim said this was a genuine surprise when we interviewed him at the Graphene industry showcase event (Vol 4 Iss1 p.8). Well, the MIT team have been exploring this field of twistronics and have now found that using trilayer twisted graphene creates more robust superconductivity at slightly higher temperatures. This points the researchers towards more layers of graphene. Maybe people will start to realise multilayer sheet graphene is much more than graphite. In another development, liquid mercury has been turned into a solid by graphene and the resulting composite has promise for making a new generation of catalysts that could replace more expensive noble metals such as platinum and gold. This finding might also create the possibility to remove liquid mercury contamination from oil and gas processing. Sparc technologies in Australia has some profile this month. They have developed a functionalised graphene with the University of Adelaide. This is showing promise for land remediation and also early work is showing it has some value adsorbing precious metals from mining waste. Sustainability applications like these attract our attention, especially if followed by commercial success. Swedish company 2D fab is working on a project with Swedish research institutes to commercialise a new process for making hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) using graphene paper electrodes. H2O2 is an important industrial product used for bleaching and is an important ingredient in many consumer products. The current process for making H2O2 is energy intensive and creates waste. This new process promises to be lower energy without waste and is more environmentally sustainable. The project should complete by April 2023. Keeping the sustainability theme this month, we also see that the GEIC has started to engage with graphene enhanced concrete, This is really good news. Regular readers will know that we believe graphene in concrete will eventually become the biggest application because it has the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 2% with very little impact on our lifestyles. A message that perhaps might reach the ears of those attending the UN Climate Chance conference later this year. As usual there is so much more to explore in this issue, including two special features by Debbie Nelson that are well worth reading. Adrian Nixon, 1st March 2021£45.00 View product
