Graphene Leaders Canada (GLC) has announced that it has been awarded $350,000 CAD (around $261,000 USD) grant funding for a joint project under the National Research Council United Kingdom (UK) Research Institute (NRC-UKRI) Research and Innovation Program. This funding will support GLC’s Scaling of Graphene Oxide towards the development of GLC’s Environmental platform of products.
This project will support scale up activities of graphene oxide with a focus on developing a cost effective, scalable production method aimed at commercializing our environmental platform of products for air and water treatment, said Dr. Leah Coumont, GLC’s Director of R&D.
GLC’s patented Protective Coating for Metal Surfaces incorporates graphene into a metal composite plating system and has demonstrated improvements to the wear-abrasion resistance up to 58% over the standard coating. GLC’s patented Nano-lubricity coating offers disruptive improvements in the performance of sports equipment. GLC has other coatings work underway with various global partners to deliver a performance improvement to their products and industry.
GLC also announced it has secured a partner in the coatings industry who will scale to a commercial level the GLC+ Protective Coating for Metal Surfaces, a premier electroless plating coating demonstrating game-changing improvements in wear-abrasion, hardness and lubricity. The partnership will enable the company to begin full-scale development of the coating for deployment to the oil and gas market.
"GLC has conducted extensive work in the development of this state-of-the-art graphene-enhanced coatings solution," said Dr. Coumont. "The enormous market potential and compelling economic benefits from applying this coating derive from a unique formulation of our graphene nanomaterials into an existing alloy coating, co-depositing a small percentage of the graphene to produce a disruptive improvement in performance and the overall lifetime of products under high-wear conditions.
Extensive third-party testing has reportedly demonstrated success in the development of a first-to-market electroless coating solution that demonstrates GLC’s industry-leading expertise in graphene-enhanced products and application development capabilities. GLC’s partnership to scale this product into market will, as the Company hopes, demonstrate a world-leading graphene application with significant market reach.
"It's very rewarding to see this innovative coating technology move from the research lab to the commercial marketplace where it will demonstrate emerging technology solutions in graphene," said Donna Mandau, President & CEO of GLC.