February 2019

A recent announcement was made by Perpetuus, stating that following 18 months of close collaboration between Perpetuus and Vittoria scientists, development work along with extensive laboratory to terrain testing has been completed on the first commercial elastomer to contain hybrid graphene fillers for the tire industry.

According to the statement, a new standard for nano surface engineered graphenes for cycle tires has now been established. This next generation graphene technology reportedly enables Vittoria to produce tires that are superior to all others within the cycle tire market.

Haydale announced its financial results for H1 FY2019 (six months ended 31 December 2018). Revenues were £1.64 million (up 20% from H2 FY2018 but down 20% from H1 FY2018). Loss before tax was £3.47 million and cash at hand was £0.96 million (Haydale recently announced plans to raise £7.8 million).

Haydale says that it made significant investments to increase its production capabilities at its US Silicon Carbide operation (revenues from US operations were up 10% in H1FY18). Haydale also announced that it sold over 200 Kg of functional ink into the biomedical sensor market and that it has received its first commercial revenues for its graphene piezoresitive inks.

Graphene and 2D materials producer Grolltex has announced the completion of its recent capacity expansion and released production for 30,000 eight-inch wafer equivalents per year at its CVD monolayer fabrication facility in San Diego, California.

This is the only commercial CVD monolayer graphene production facility in California and in fact it is the largest capacity plant of its kind in the U.S., said CEO, Jeff Draa. Demand for our electronics grade graphene has never been better. Our production lines are capable of producing single layer graphene or single layer hexagonal Boron Nitride.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway, Sophia University in Japan and SINTEF Industry, Norway have demonstrated the use of graphene as both a growth substrate and transparent conductive electrode for an ultraviolet light-emitting diode.

Top- and bird-view SEM images of nanocolumns grown on DLG transferred onto amorphous silica glass

The team focused on a flip-chip configuration, where GaN/AlGaN nanocolumns were grown as the light-emitting structure using plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. Although the sheet resistance increased after nanocolumn growth compared with pristine double-layer graphene, the experiments showed that the double-layer graphene functioned adequately as an electrode. The GaN/AlGaN nanocolumns were found to exhibit a high crystal quality with no observable defects or stacking faults.

Haydale Graphene Industries reportedly intends to raise up to £7.8 Million (over $10 Million USD) at a big discount to the market price. Any money raised will be used to fund general working capital, restructuring costs and investment in equipment.

Of the money, £3.8 million is being raised through a placing while an open offer will bring in up to a further £4 Million. The graphene and composite materials specialist lost £3.5 Million (£2.67 Million) in the six months to December on sales of £1.6 Million (£2 Million).

New equipment developed in Brazil - the Solar-T - will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) to measure solar flares. It is estimated that the Sun-THz, the name given to the new photometric telescope, will be launched in 2022 on one of the missions to the ISS and will remain there to take consistent measurements. The telescope contains graphene sensors that are highly sensitive to terahertz frequencies, able to detect polarization and be adjusted electronically.

The Sun THz is an enhanced version of the Solar-T, a double photometric telescope that was launched in 2016 by NASA in Antarctica in a stratospheric balloon that flew 12 days at an altitude of 40,000 m. The Solar-T captured the energy emitted by solar flares at two unprecedented frequencies: from 3 to 7 terahertz (THz) that correspond to a segment of far infrared radiation. The Solar-T was designed and built in Brazil by researchers at CRAAM together with colleagues at the Center for Semiconductor Components at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). The new equipment will be the product of a partnership with the Lebedev Physics Institute in Russia.

The MWC 2019 is the world's largest event for the mobile industry, organized by the GSMA. It features a large exhibition, conference programme and networking opportunities. The Graphene Flagship partners with the MWC event and will host a graphene pavilion in the exhibition to showcase graphene materials and developers.

This year, one of the exhibitors in the Graphene Pavilion will be ICFO, showcasing prototypes like health monitoring wearables, next-generation tiny spectrometers and camera sensors.

The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) has collaborated on a project to advance the development of a low-cost, self-cleaning coating technology for industrial filter membranes.

The Smart Filter project used graphene and its derivatives to create a coated filter membrane that offers increased resistance to fouling for industrial waste water treatment. Membrane filters are used in a number of industrial separation applications but are afflicted by fouling, which typically lowers throughput or increases energy consumption, and reduces filter life. Focusing upon oil water separation and nuclear waste water treatment, the collaboration, with G2O Water Technologies, Haydale and Sellafield, developed a repeatable, reproducible and scalable process to make coated filter membranes, which delivered a 30% improvement in permeability when compared to an equivalent uncoated filter.

This is a sponsored post by IDTechEx

We have been following the graphene industry as analysts for the past seven years. The results of our ongoing research can be seen here: www.IDTechEx.com/graphene. In this time, we have seen the industry grow in maturity.

At first, the industry was an over-hyped field, full of over-promising, under-delivery, and utter confusion. Then, the community spent multiple years to covert itself into a viable proposition in multiple ways:

Graphene Flagship researchers at DTU, Denmark, solved the problem of graphene's accumulation of defects and impurities due to environmental exposure by protecting it with insulating layers of hexagonal boron nitride, another two-dimensional material with insulating properties.

Peter Bøggild, researcher at Graphene Flagship partner DTU and coauthor of the paper, explains that although 'graphene is a fantastic material that could play a crucial role in making new nano-sized electronics, it is still extremely difficult to control its electrical properties.' Since 2010, scientists at DTU have tried to tailor the electrical properties of graphene, by making a very fine pattern of holes, so that channels through which an electric power can flow freely are formed. 'Creating nanostructured graphene turned out to be amazingly difficult, since even small errors wash out all the properties we designed it to have,' comments Bøggild.