August 2022

NanoXplore has announced that it is to purchase a 'significant portion' of the assets of XG Sciences, in a sale conducted by XG’s senior secured creditor pursuant to Article 9 of Michigan’s enactment of the Uniform Commercial Code. NanoXplore and the senior creditor have entered into an asset purchase agreement pursuant to which NanoXplore is acquiring XG’s mechanical milling platform, research and development lab and all issued and pending patents and trademarks, among other items. The payment of this transaction is paid in cash without any share issuance. 

Founded in 2006, XG Sciences specialized in the production of graphene nanoplatelets and the formulations of advanced materials that amplify product performance across diverse applications such as Lithium-ion battery anode materials, automotive, packaging, composites, concrete, and other industrial markets. The Company ceased operations in July. While operating, the Company worked with leading companies such as Ford for noise reduction and light-weighting using graphene-enhanced PU foam as well as Callaway Golf Company for graphene-enhanced golf balls.

Earlier this month, Iterchimica and Jean Lefebvre (UK) installed a Gipave modified HRA (Hot Rolled Asphalt) 35/14 Surface Course in Chelmsford, Essex. Gipave is a graphene-enhanced polymer additive, which due to its thermal management properties, makes the asphalt less susceptible to hardening and cracking in cold temperatures, as well as to softening and deforming in high temperatures.

This is the latest in a long line of graphene-enhanced construction materials projects. This field shows tremendous potential with many ongoing tests and projects, and no doubt many more to come. Learn more by reading Graphene-Info's Graphene Construction Materials report! 

Mito Material Solutions has launched its new 7,000 sq ft headquarters in Indianapolis. The company develops additives to enhance performance of composites and plastics, including its flagship graphene oxide-based additive E-GO.

At the new facility, Mito houses its staff offices, commercial-scale graphene functionalization and dispersion equipment, an R&D laboratory where the company can fabricate sample parts with its materials and an in-house analytical room for testing material properties. The R&D lab includes capabilities for hand layup, vacuum infusion and waterjet cutting with more equipment to come, and the testing room includes equipment to test a sample part’s flexure and tensile strength, interlaminar toughness, compression strength, as well as thermal, electrical and vibrational properties.

UK-based startup Anaphite has announced the closing of a £4.1-million (around US$4.8 million) seed round, led by Elbow Beach Capital with a £1.5-million (US$1.8 million) investment and supported by Wealth Club, Blue Wire Capital, Oxford Investment Opportunity Network, Zero Carbon Capital, Silicon Roundabout Ventures and Deeptech Labs.

Anaphite incorporates graphene into battery materials, via an inexpensive and scalable process that fits directly into existing cell production lines. Anaphite mainly focuses on the enhancement of lithium-ion batteries for the electric vehicle industry, for which it aims to reduce battery manufacturing costs by over 10%. The company’s technology is also said to improve battery capacity and charge rates, potentially reducing charging time by 50%.

Researchers from India's Haldia Institute of Technology have created a gravity filter using graphene oxide (GO), meant for purifying river water. Using alternative water resources like river water can help address the rising shortage of freshwater resources worldwide. Therefore, the deployment of cost-effective water filtration technologies is imperative for the desalination of river water and purification of polluted water.

Filtration using a gravity filter is a highly popular method for water purification. A gravity filter is a type of pressure filter wherein water passes through the filtering component on the influent side at atmospheric pressure and the whole system is driven by the force of gravity instead of electricity. A major benefit of gravity filters is that they are free from moving components, therefore require less filter maintenance. Another significant advantage of using a gravity-based water filtration system is that the system does not need a power supply. The main drawback, on the other hand, is the low output of purified water. The limitations of filtering technology imply that no one filtration material can remove all pollutants present in water.

Avadain recently raised $1.37 million enabled by Netcapital, a digital private capital markets ecosystem.

Brad Larschan, CEO of Avadain, commented, “Avadain was founded with the mission of unleashing the ‘Graphene Revolution’ by delivering industrial volumes of our green, high-quality graphene flakes at an affordable price to address rapidly growing market demand. We are grateful to Netcapital for bringing our investment story and mission to thousands of prospective investors. The funds we raised through the Netcapital funding portal will help us expand our global patent portfolio, produce samples which industry has been asking for, and fund operations to meet the explosive projections for graphene demand across high-growth markets.”

This is a sponsored post by GrapheneUP

Population growth and improved living standards require solutions for textiles with new functions to meet changing needs. Wherever they are used, graphene-based smart textiles provide added value in terms of improved performance or comfort. GrapheneUP®, a leading graphene company with the largest production of few-layer graphene in Europe, has developed and introduced into the market new graphene-based products for textile industry: INKGUP® Fabric and PRINTGUP®.

INKGUP® Fabric is graphene-based coating formulation for textile industry produced with few-layer graphene GUP®, designed to provide superior finishing properties. This formulation has been certified antiviral (ISO 18184:2019) also for SARS-CoV-2, antistatic and with excellent abrasion resistance and thermal regulation properties.

Several properties of textiles are improved using the formulations developed with GrapheneUP®, in particular the thermal regulation, abrasion resistance, EMI shielding, UV protection, excellent electrical conductivity, antibacterial and antiviral properties.

UK-based graphene developer Haydale announced that it is set to raise around £5.00 million in a new public offering, and will also offer existing shareholders to subscribe to more shares to raises approximately £0.51 million. The new offering is done at a share price of 2 pence (well below Haydale's share price a few days ago).

The new funds will be used for general working capital needs of the business.

Researchers from Brown University, the University of New South Wales, Columbia University, University of Innsbruck, and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan have carried out new experiments involving trilayer graphene, in which an external magnetic field is not required in order to achieve the 'superconducting diode effect' - a material that behaves like a superconductor in one direction of current flow and like a resistor in the other.

In contrast to a conventional diode, such a superconducting diode exhibits a completely vanishing resistance and thus no losses in the forward direction. This could form the basis for future lossless quantum electronics. Physicists have already succeeded in creating the diode effect, but with some fundamental limitations. "At that time, the effect was very weak and it was generated by an external magnetic field, which is very disadvantageous in potential technological applications," explains Mathias Scheurer from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck. The new experiments confirmed a thesis previously theorized by Scheurer: Namely, that superconductivity and magnetism coexist in a system consisting of three graphene layers twisted against each other. The system thus virtually generates its own internal magnetic field, creating a diode effect.

Scientists from The University of Manchester, Tsinghua University in China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently reported that graphene can facilitate gold extraction from waste containing only trace amounts of gold (down to billionth of a percent).

This surprising application of graphene was described to work quite straightforwardly: add graphene into a solution containing traces of gold and, after a few minutes, pure gold appears on graphene sheets, with no other chemicals or energy input involved. After this you can extract your pure gold by simply burning the graphene off. The research shows that 1 gram of graphene can be sufficient for extracting nearly 2 grams of gold.