North Gyeongsang Province in Korea has been selected in a national industrial innovation call to establish a large-scale demonstration and commercialization infrastructure for graphene nanomaterials. The project, part of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s “Industrial Innovation Foundation Establishment Project”, will receive a total budget of 14.3 billion KRW (over US$9 million) and will run through 2030. It aims to accelerate the commercialization of graphene by providing companies with access to shared, state-of-the-art facilities and know-how.
The graphene initiative will be led by the POSTECH Nano Convergence Technology Institute and will, for the first time in Korea, offer an integrated support system that spans the entire value chain: from graphene material synthesis and transfer, through analysis and evaluation, to the fabrication of semiconductor and sensor devices, prototype manufacturing and commercialization support. The province notes that while Korea has strong graphene R&D capabilities, progress toward industrialization has been hampered by a lack of empirical, pilot-scale infrastructure; this new program is designed to close that gap.
This graphene effort is one of three industrial innovation infrastructure projects recently approved for North Gyeongsang Province, alongside initiatives for ultra‑precise nanotechnology-based electronic glass and AI-based “on-device” self-manufacturing. Together, these projects are intended to build a robust high-tech manufacturing ecosystem centered on the cities of Pohang and Gumi, and to strengthen Korea’s global competitiveness in advanced materials and smart manufacturing by 2030.
