Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like pattern. Graphene is considered to be the world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material - of both electricity and heat. All of these properties are exciting researchers and businesses around the world - as graphene has the potential to revolutionize entire industries - in the fields of electricity, conductivity, energy generation, batteries, sensors and more.
Mechanical strength
Graphene is the world's strongest material, and can be used to enhance the strength of other materials. Dozens of researchers have demonstrated that adding even a trace amount of graphene to plastics, metals or other materials can make these materials much stronger - or lighter (as you can use a smaller amount of material to achieve the same strength).
Such graphene-enhanced composite materials can find uses in aerospace, building materials, mobile devices, and many other applications.
Thermal applications
Graphene is the most heat conductive found to date. As graphene is also strong and light, it means that it is a great material for making heat-spreading solutions, such as heat sinks or heat dissipation films. This could be useful in both microelectronics (for example to make LED lighting more efficient and longer lasting) and also in larger applications - for example thermal foils for mobile devices. Huawei's latest smartphones, for example, have adopted graphene-based thermal films.
Energy storage
Since graphene is the world's thinnest material, it also extremely high surface-area to volume ratio. This makes graphene a very promising material for use in batteries and supercapacitors. Graphene may enable batteries and supercapacitors (and even fuel-cells) that can store more energy - and charge faster, too.
The advantages of graphene batteries
Coatings ,sensors, electronics and more
Graphene has a lot of promise for additional applications: anti-corrosion coatings and paints, efficient and precise sensors, faster and efficient electronics, flexible displays, efficient solar panels, faster DNA sequencing, drug delivery, and more.
Graphene is such a great and basic building block that it seems that any industry can benefit from this new material. Time will tell where graphene will indeed make an impact - or whether other new materials will be more suitable.
The latest Graphene Application news:
Applied Graphene Materials' graphene-enhanced anti-corrosion primer used by England’s Environment Agency for flood defense applications
Applied Graphene Materials has announced that England’s Environment Agency (EA) has successfully completed its first application of AGM’s harsh environment anti-corrosion product to one of its flood defense assets on the North East coast of England. The coastal flood defense gates were coated with AGM’s new graphene-enhanced Genable CX-based anti-corrosion primer.
The AGM’s coating system used in this project is a further iteration of AGM’s product offerings for barrier performance and anti-corrosion application. It represents the culmination of 18 months of in-depth testing and evaluation of anti-corrosion performance for both salt-spray and immersion in harsh test regimes.
Tata Steel develops a unique few-layer rGO film material
Tata Steel has developed a new product, a few-layer film of rGO along with its collaborators at CeNS, Bengaluru. The company is now starting to mass-produce the films and offer them to application developers.
Figure 1: (a) Digital image of rGO/Cu foil (5 cm2). Contactact angle (b) and AFM height profile (c) on rGO/Cu
The rGO film is produced (using a modified CVD process) on copper. The film's average thickness is 5-10 nm and offers a corrosion rate of 0.02 mm/year (Tafel) and a water contact angle of ~ 97°.
These unique properties make the film suitable to protect the copper from corrosion, chemical attacks, and thermal oxidations. It also makes copper hydrophobic and can act as an antibacterial surface.
Applied Graphene Materials launches new graphene-enhanced range of coatings, paints and additives
Applied Graphene Materials (AGM) has announced the introduction of two new products based on its GNPs.
The Company has launched a range of industrial anti-corrosion paint incorporating its Genable graphene additives. The two epoxy-based prototype primer systems are said the AGM to represent an easy way for those considering the adoption of graphene to quickly test and evaluate its potential benefits.
Graphene Square shows transparent graphene toaster at CES
At the recent CES event, South Korea-based Graphene Square presented its 'kitchen styler' - a transparent toaster that uses graphene.
In addition to tracking the level of toasting of the bread, the device is also said to offer 50% less power consumption and enable outdoor cooking with rechargeable batteries. The device is also foldable and expandable to dual cooking/warming plates and connects to mobile devices for recipe download/control.
Haydale's GNPs to improve textiles used by iCraft and Pro-Spec
Haydale has announced that, following the successful incorporation of graphene nano-platelets (GNPs) in its cosmetic face mask sheets and PPE face masks, iCraft is using Haydale’s functionalized GNPs in its graphene-coated fabric, THERMiT™.
In order to grant increased performance in terms of thermal and antibacterial properties, Haydale’s plasma functionalized GNPs have been used to coat the nylon fibers in the lining of a down jacket. The graphene coated fabric, THERMiT™, was supplied to South Korean sports apparel brand, Pro-Specs, for use in a new graphene-enhanced jacket. The initial production run of 8,000 items, which was available in store and online, sold out within weeks of being released.