The wall street journal posted an interesting article and video on graphene. The article discusses the current state of research and business, possible graphene applications and the rush to patent related technologies.

The article starts with the Cambridge graphene research center and then discusses several companies and their graphene programs, including IBM, Nokia, BlueStone Global Tech, Vorbeck Materials, Lockheed Martin and Aixtron.

China's Chongqing Morsh Technology is building a production line in Chongqing that will be used to produce 15" single-layer graphene films. They hope to start production by March 2014, and they already signed an agreement with Guangdong Zhengyang, an OGS maker to produce 10 million graphene based transparent conducting films (TCFs) in a year for the next five years. These films will be used to produce touch panels for mobile devices.

Chongqing Morsh was established by the Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology. The company is buying graphene from Ningbo Morsh Technology.

Last month we posted about Shanghai's Powerbooster Technology and their graphene-based flexible touch-panels for mobile devices. The company is using Bluestone Global Tech's graphene to produce those panels. BGT now posted a nice video showing these touch panels in action:

According to Powerbooster, they are already producing and selling around two million touch panels each month, apparently to mid-sized Chinese smartphone makers. The first products will reach the market by the end of 2013.

Powerbooster Technology (based in Shanghai) developed a graphene-based flexible touch-panels for mobile devices. The company says that graphene is cheaper and stronger than ITO (traditionally used for touch panels). The company plans to invest $150 million in the next three years in order to bring their solutions to the market.

Powerbooster is partnering with Bluestone Global Tech to supply them with graphene. They say they already started to produce these touch panels - in fact they claim that they already sell around 2 million touch panels per month, apparently to mid-sized Chinese smartphone makers (this is rather surprising, hopefully we'll learn more soon). They aim to get the first products with their graphene touch screens in the market by the end of 2013.

Researchers from Purdue University developed a new transparent electrode made from silver nanowires and graphene. ITO, which is currently used for transparent electrodes in touch displays is expensive, non-flexible, brittle and rare. Silver Nanowires is a promising material to replace ITO - and it is already being commercialized for LCD and OLED displays.

The researchers say that coating the silver nanowires with graphene sheets changed the resistance of the electrodes - which dropped to only 22 ohms per square (which is five times better than ITO which has a sheet resistance of 100 ohms per square).

Korean researchers developed a transparent (84.5% transmittance) actuator that can be used to make movable elements for touch-screens and vari-focal lenses. The actuator is made from a dielectric elastomer layer sandwiched between two transparent and stretchable graphene electrodes (and a frame that links the materials to the substrate).

The researchers demonstrated how this actuator can be used in a tactile display. They also showed that the device can work even when stretched to 25% of its length.

Bluestone Global Tech (BGT) was founded in 2011 in New York with an aim to produce graphene. The company offers high-quality, fully customizable graphene on several substrates (Quartz, Copper, Silicon and others). BGT's CEO, Dr. Chung Ping Lai, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had about the company's business and technology.

Dr. Lai became BGT's CEO in November 2012. Previously he worked with Taiwan's ITRI institute, Veeco, Applied films and other companies. Dr. Lai received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Ceramics Science and Engineering of Rutgers University in 1992. 

Bluestone Global Tech released two short videos introducing Graphene. The first focuses on the different graphene properties (strength, flexibility, conductivity, etc):

The second video is all about the different graphene applications, such as displays, LEDs, touch screens, batteries, solar cells and conductive wires

Nobel Prize-winner (together with Andre Geim) Professor and Kostya Novoselov Professor Volodya Falko from Lancaster University have released a graphene roadmap. The roadmap discusses the different possible applications for graphene and also the different ways to produce the material.

The authors says that the first key application is conductors for touch-screen displays (replacing ITO), where they expect can be commercialized within 3-5 years. They also see rollable e-paper displays soon - prototypes could appear in 2015. Come 2020, we can expect graphene-based devices such as photo-detectors, wireless communications and THz generators. Replacing silicon and delivering anti-cancer drugs are interesting applications too - but these will only be possible at around 2030.

Researchers from the UK's University of Exeter discovered a new graphene based material that can be used as an ITO replacement - it's a lightweight, flexible and transparent conductor. In fact it's more flexible than ITO. They call it GraphExeter.

To create the new material, the researchers compressed ferric chloride molecules between two sheets of graphene. They are also working on a spray-on version of the material.