Up close and personal: PlanarTech's J. Patrick Frantz

J. Patrick Frantz from PlanarTech was a great sport and answered this week's personal Graphene-Info questions. Read what he has to say and don't forget to contact us here if you wish to also be featured.

  • Job title and description: I’m the co-founder and President/CEO of planarTECH LLC. But we’re a small company, so despite the title I do everything!
  • What was the last book you read? and the last movie you saw? The last book I read was Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch, an urban fantasy tale set in the UK. The last movie I saw was Frozen. My oldest daughter can’t get enough of it!
  • Tell us a couple of things you have on your desk at work: I have a picture of my two daughters, a Mechanical Dog Four-Leg Walking Type I got in Japan many years ago, and a Doxie scanner that I use constantly.
  • What’s your favorite food? "Pad Kra Pao Moo," which is a spicy Thai dish consisting of Thai basil stir fried with minced pork and peppers
  • What was your latest travel destination? We (the whole family) spent a few days at the beach in Pattaya, Thailand around New Year’s Day.
  • What was the last music CD you listened to? The last full album I listened to was The Resistance by Muse, a real genre-bending work.
  • What is the object you'd most like to 3D print? I want to be able to 3D print some of the parts for our CVD systems, especially using graphene composites. It would be really meta to use graphene-based parts to make a system for producing graphene. But I don’t think were there yet.
  • Who would you most like to sit next to on a long flight? (dead or alive) I’ve always had a fascination with ancient history, these cultures that used to exist, thrived and are now gone. So I’d like to sit with an ancient polymath like Imhotep or Aristotle. That or someone more modern like Leonardo da Vinci, who was a true Renaissance Man. That guy was into everything!
  • What are you most excited about regarding graphene in the future? Most of the current applications for graphene are just using graphene as a replacement for existing materials. I’m really excited about the applications that haven’t been thought of yet - the ones that only graphene or other 2D materials can realize.
Posted: Jan 27,2015 by Roni Peleg