Graphene-Info: the graphene experts

First Graphene has received an initial purchase order from US-based Flux Footwear, its first production application in athletic footwear. Flux will use the company's PureGRAPH graphene additive in its Graphene XT performance gym shoes and leisure range. The additive goes into high-wear outsole areas, aiming to improve durability, abrasion resistance, tear strength and grip without adding weight.

Flux Footwear Adapt Runner. Image from: prnewswire
 

Flux already sells graphene-enhanced shoes under its Graphene-Pro line. First Graphene says the order sets up a pathway to recurring PureGRAPH supply as Flux increases production volumes. 

UK-based Duo Packaging has developed a graphene-enhanced polyethylene film for flexible packaging, created with the University of Manchester's Graphene Engineering Innovation Center (GEIC) and backed by the Innovation Navigator Programme. The material, branded 2DPE, uses graphene to boost the mechanical performance of polyethylene film, allowing manufacturers to use thinner, more heavily recycled plastic without losing strength or sealing performance.

Zoe Brimelow, Dale Brimelow & Mark Dickie (Image credit: Darren Robinson Photography)

In industrial trials with GEIC and live-shopping retailer QVC, the film increased material strength by up to 35% and let QVC raise the recycled content in its packaging from 45% to 60%. QVC also found the film could be heat-sealed at temperatures 15°C lower than standard film, and cut bag thickness from 30 to 28 microns, a 5% weight reduction. QVC has now switched its UK fulfilment center in Liverpool from standard autobagging film to 2DPE, a move expected to save around 50 tonnes of virgin plastic a year and cut QVC's packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees by about £21,150 (about US$27,900) annually.

First Graphene has entered a three-year Development and Commercialization Agreement with Turkish prepreg manufacturer Aeropreg to bring a PureGRAPH®-enhanced carbon fiber prepreg to market. The agreement pairs First Graphene's proprietary epoxy concentrates, developed to optimize how PureGRAPH® graphene is incorporated into resin systems, with Aeropreg's established prepreg manufacturing and in-house resin development capabilities.

Carbon fiber prepreg - fiber pre-impregnated with partially cured resin - is widely used to strengthen structural components in aerospace, defense, automotive and sporting goods applications, including primary structures in modern commercial aircraft. The agreement builds on First Graphene's existing development work incorporating PureGRAPH® into carbon fiber composites, including customer development programs and grant-funded research, and follows the Company's recent acquisition of MITO Material Solutions, which expanded its composites technology and customer base in North America.

Japanese appliance maker Siroca will launch a graphene-coated personal space heater, the "Sumipoka" (model SH-GC251), on October 16, priced at ¥13,860 (about US$88). The compact heater uses a graphene coating on its heating element to generate warmth within three seconds of being switched on, combining the material's far-infrared emission with fan-assisted airflow to warm the body rather than just the surrounding air.

The heater is designed for small, enclosed spaces - bathrooms, dressing rooms, room corners, under desks - where instant, targeted heat matters more than warming a whole room. A "Yobi-atatame" pre-warm mode runs at high power for the first 30 minutes before automatically dropping to low power, while an "Omakase" auto mode shuts the unit off once the room passes 23°C and restarts it when the temperature falls back below that threshold, aimed at reducing energy use during extended operation. Siroca also built in tip-over and vibration detection, plus overheat detection that shuts the unit down if airflow is blocked, such as by a cloth draped over the heater.

Researchers at the University of Osaka, working with collaborators across institutions in Japan, Taiwan, the UK, and France, have used an ultrathin, large-area suspended graphene target to accelerate protons to 132 MeV, nearly half the speed of light, in a laser-driven ion acceleration experiment.

Laser-driven ion acceleration is being explored as a more compact alternative to conventional radio-frequency particle accelerators, with potential applications ranging from medicine to laboratory astrophysics. Pushing protons to higher energies generally means using thinner targets, but ultrathin targets are easily destroyed by the weak "prepulse" that precedes a laser's main high-intensity pulse. The team addressed this using large-area suspended graphene (LSG) targets just a few nanometers thick (4, 8, and 16 atomic layers), exploiting graphene's unusual combination of extreme thinness and durability to withstand the prepulse and remain intact until the main pulse arrived.

Researchers at Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU), the HMU Research Center's Institute of Emerging Technologies (i-EMERGE), the Foundation for Research and Technology's Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (FORTH-IESL), and the University of Crete have used laser-reduced graphene oxide (LrGO) as a transparent conductive electrode for both perovskite solar cells and micro-supercapacitors fabricated on the same glass substrate.

The team deposited graphene oxide (GO) films by spray coating, then reduced and patterned them using an ultrashort-pulse infrared laser to form conductive LrGO electrodes, avoiding the more complex and costly chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and transfer processes typically used to put graphene into solar cells. The optimized LrGO films reached a sheet resistance of about 400 Ω per square at 38% optical transmittance.

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has reported its financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026. Revenue for the year came in at AU$0.724 million (about US$502,000), up from AU$0.238 million (about US$165,000) in the prior fiscal year.

The company's net loss widened to AU$29.79 million (about US$20.67 million) for FY2026, compared with a net loss of AU$8.69 million (about US$6.03 million) in FY2025. Loss per share was AU$0.25 (about US$0.17), compared with AU$0.09 (about US$0.06) a year earlier.