Interviews with graphene market leaders

Graphene-Info is excited to welcome Mark Ritchie for a Q&A session. Mark Ritchie is a founding board member of Graphene Valley Corporation, where he focuses on the water, food, and agriculture sectors, both domestic and international. Minnesota’s elected Secretary of State from 2007 to 2015, he has served as Minnesota’s Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army since 2019. A graduate of Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota, where he served as the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences’ Endowed Chair in Sustainable Agricultural Systems from 2015 to 2017. He has a graduate degree in public affairs from the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where he is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council.

We were delighted to hear his perspectives during this session, drawing on his extensive experience in public leadership, international collaboration, and sustainable innovation.

The 2023 China International Graphene Innovation Conference (GRAPCHINA 2023), will be held in Shanghai, China from November 10 to 12, 2023. The conference will be jointly hosted by the National Graphene Innovation Center, Shanghai University and the Graphene Alliance (CGIA). Minyang Lu, the Deputy Secretary-General of the CGIA, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had regarding the upcoming conference.

Hello Minyang, thank you for your time. Can you tell us more about the GRAPCHINA event?

The International Graphene Innovation Conference has been successfully held for nine years. The number of participants has set a new record year each year, and its influence has continued to improve. The nine sessions attracted more than 4,000 enterprises, 23,000 participants and 1,200 experts in new materials field, which came from over 30 countries and regions around the world. At present, it has developed into a gathering place, a vanue and an international event for the world's cutting-edge graphene technology achievements and innovative products. The graphene application expo held simultaneously with the conference, will continuously inject new vitality into the development of the global graphene industry by gathering the global graphene industrialization achievements. 

The 2023 International Graphene Innovation Conference (GRAPCHINA 2023) will be organized by the China Innovation Alliance of the Graphene Industry (CGIA), National Graphene Innovation Center (NGIC) and Shanghai University in Shanghai on November 10-12 of the year 2023. This year, GRAPCHINA 2023 will focus on the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, international cooperation, and industrial and supply chain, we will work with end users to create a number of commercialization forums. 

Graphene-Info is happy to give the stage to talented young graphene researchers, especially with such commitment and passion as Roberto Pezone from TU Delft, who has agreed to chat with us and answer a few questions about his background, work and collaboration with the Graphene Flagship.

Roberto Pezone checking a wafer at its initial fabrication stages

Q: Thank you for this interview Roberto! Very nice to e-meet you. We know you have been involved with graphene research for some time, can you give us a quick overview of your graphene research interests and projects?

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my research. Within the Graphene Flagship's Work Package 6 (core 3), my primary focus lies in integrating graphene into sensors, particularly microphones. My main objective is to develop methods that enable the seamless integration of graphene on a wafer-scale while thoroughly exploring the advantages and disadvantages associated with such approaches.

In addition to developing fabrication techniques, I am also highly interested in characterizing the potential of graphene for acoustic devices. This type of research plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between graphene's exceptional properties and its practical utilization in the industry, unlocking higher performance and new sensor concepts.

Graphene-Info is happy to give the stage to talented young graphene researchers, especially those with such commitment and passion as Dr. Maria Giovanna Pastore Carbone, who has agreed to chat with us and answer a few questions about her background, work and collaboration with the Graphene Flagship.

Maria-Giovanna (right) in the lab at FORTH, with collaborator Christos Pavlou

Dr. Maria Giovanna Pastore Carbone is an Italian Materials Engineer, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH/ICEHT). She has been working on graphene since 2015 and has joined the Graphene Flagship in 2017. Her current research in the framework of the Graphene Flagship project is focused on the integration of graphene and related materials for the development of multi-functional systems (such as lightweight composites for EMI shielding applications and coatings for protection against UV-vis radiation and permeation of gasses/vapors), with emphasis on their structure/property relationship.

The Enlit Europe 2022 energy conference recently took place, and the Graphene Flagship participated, showing some of the latest energy-related graphene projects. We took the chance to discuss graphene with some of the flagship researchers, and we also talked to Prof. Jari Kinaret, the director of the flagship project, to learn of how he summarizes the last 10 years now that the flagship project will soon end.

Q: We understand that the Graphene Flagship is attending Enlit Europe 2022, showing some new graphene R&D projects. We'll be happy to get an overview of what will be displayed at the event.

At Enlit Europe, the Graphene Flagship exhibited innovations from its Spearhead Projects, which are industry-led initiatives working to move materials from research labs towards commercial applications. Among these initiatives are:

• CircuitBreakers, led by ABB and developing first-of-their-kind grease-free, maintenance-free, low-voltage circuit breakers for fault protection in key parts of the electrical grid;
• GRAPES, led by Enel Green Power and working on combining silicon solar cells with perovskite solar cells, paving the way for low-cost, highly efficient photovoltaic energy, surpassing the limits of silicon based cells.

Today we published new versions of all our graphene market reports. Graphene-Info provides comprehensive niche graphene market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about these niche markets. The reports are now updated to October 2021.

The Graphene Batteries Market Report:

• The advantages using graphene batteries
• The different ways graphene can be used in batteries
• Various types of graphene materials
• What's on the market today
• Detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode material
• Personal contact details into most graphene developers

The report package provides a good introduction to the graphene battery - present and future. It includes a list of all graphene companies involved with batteries and gives detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode materials and contact details into most graphene developers. Read more here!

Germany-based Skeleton Technologies has been on the forefront of graphene-based supercapacitors development for many years, and the company recently made some major announcements, including a large (>€70 million) financing round, the super-battery project and several strategic customers and projects - including ones with Medcom, Skoda, CAF, Wrightbus and Marubeni.

We recently talked with Skeleton's VP of automotive products, Sebastian Pohlmann, who updated us on the company's business and technology.

Vaulta is an Australia-based startup that focuses on graphene-enhanced battery casings. Vaulta's director, Dominic Spooner, had a chat with the Graphene-Info team to help shed some light on this fascinating young company, it's technology and plans for the future.

Dominic has over 12 years’ experience as a design engineer and has worked in a wide range of industries including renewables and batteries, defense and aerospace, consumer products, commercial products and startups. He reveals that the idea for Vaulta came to him after working directly in the field of battery design and seeing an opportunity for growth that was largely being overlooked in favor of continuing with the status quo of battery module design. Dominic founded Ember Design House in 2017 undertaking general product from R&D to production and in 2019, he founded Vaulta to focus fully on the battery casing industry and turn his product ideas into reality.

UK-based planarTECH has concluded a successful equity crowdfunding campaign in 2020, as part of Graphene-Info's Graphene Crowdfunding Arena. We posted a post-campaign interview with the company's CEO, J. Patrick Frantz back in June 2020. We thought it was time to get an update as things are moving fast for the company.

Hello Patrick! It's been over half a year since you concluded the successful crowdfunding campaign. What are your thoughts now regarding the process and the campaign?

The crowdfunding was definitely an interesting experience and we’re glad we did it. It is hard for us to say if our experience was normal or not due to our campaign being launched at the beginning of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the end, however, we did reach our stated goal, though we didn’t get quite enough funding to do the things we really want to do. As a result, we're still considering bringing on new investment, and for this round we are looking at more traditional fundraising methods (strategic partners, etc.).

Our friend Dr. Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, a well respected graphene market analyst, is launching a new service called TechBlick that is a subscription-based online and all-year round event focused on advanced materials such as graphene, 2D materials, CNTs, boron nitrides, QDs, and more.

Graphene-Info partnered with TechBlick, to provide our readers an exclusive 25% discount on the TechBlick subscription. We took advantage of this launch to discuss the graphene market and industry with Dr. Ghaffarzadeh and also discuss the new service.

Hello Kasha. How do you see the graphene market shaping up in 2021?

I have closely followed and examined the graphene industry for a full decade. The landscape has certainly changed. Many companies have come and gone, and many once considered revolutionary applications are now ruled out, but overall, the industry is now at a tipping point.

We think 2021/2022 will be a turning point, setting the industry on its growth path, despite the delays caused these past 12 months due to Covid. For some, these delays have been painful as projects were pushed back or partners or customers dropped graphene to focus on other core areas. Many undershot their growth expectations, and some had difficult cash flow situations.