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:
Vaulta secures Federal government grant
Australia-based battery case developer Vaulta has been awarded a Federal Government grant to commercialize its battery casings for the electric vehicle market.
Vaulta received a grant of AUD$297,500 (around USD$219,000) from the Federal Government’s Accelerating Commercialization grants program to commercialize its low-cost and light-weight graphene-enhanced battery modules.
Gigabyte launches a new graphics card with a graphene lubricant
Gigabyte launched a new graphic cards that uses a graphene lubricant that is said to extend the lifetime of the fan by 2.1 times, almost like a double ball bearing design - and it also makes the fab quieter compared to the company's designs that do not use graphene.
The GeForce RTX 3070 EAGLE OC 8G rev 2.0 features Nvidia's RTX 3070 GPU clocked at 1725 Mhz, with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. It is now shipping at $1,199.
Versarien lays graphene-enhanced concrete in a residential setting
Versarien has executed the use of its graphene-enhanced concrete - this time in a residential setting. The Company poured its product for a property development company at a site in Symonds Yat. This follows the former announcenemt back in May, when the world's first graphene concrete slab was poured for commercial use at Amesbury's Solstice Park for a gym owned and run by military veterans.
Neill Ricketts, Versarien CEO, said: "We're laying a relatively small concrete slab at Symonds Yat as a forerunner for some much bigger projects."
Health Canada decides Shandong's graphene face masks pose no health risk, still does not permit the sale of other graphene masks
Health Canada recently decided that the sale of certain graphene-enhanced face masks that were considered a hazard due to their graphene content can resume, after the agency assessed the masks and found "no health risks of concern."
Health Canada issued an advisory in April asking all distributors selling masks with graphene or biomass graphene to recall their products over potential inhalation risks after preliminary assessments made the agency fear a potential for inhaled graphene particles to cause lung effects, such as inflammation, in animals. These concerns made somewhat of an impact with consumers and producers alike, and various graphene-enhanced face masks responded to these claims.
GMG announces in-house battery pilot plant investment
Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced that it is procuring equipment for a pilot production and testing plant for the manufacture of its Graphene Aluminum-Ion Batteries.
Following recently published performance results and encouraging customer feedback, production of a commercial prototype coin cell battery is targeted before the end of 2021. This pilot production and testing plant is an important next step in the Company’s battery technology development plan.