The Graphene-Info newsletter (April 27, 2023)

Versarien has announced the completion of the construction phase of a civil engineering project being undertaken by the Company with a subsidiary of Costain Group.

Versarien has been working with Costain to develop designs for, and bring into production, a 3D printed concrete headwall for use in highway construction projects, part of the Digital Roads of the Future Partnership, a collaboration led by the University of Cambridge, Costain and National Highways, of which Versarien is a partner.

Goodfellow Cambridge, a UK-based supplier of specialist metals and materials to the scientific and industrial manufacturing sectors, has recently introduced several new products, including a composite material consisting of graphene.

The new product reportedly boasts remarkable mechanical properties, along with outstanding biocompatibility. The Company's exclusive range of products, Hastalex and BioHastalex, are only available to its existing customer base.

Researchers at University of California, Irvine, working with a team from Japan's National Institute for Materials Science, have reported the discovery of nano-scale devices that can transform into many different shapes and sizes even though they exist in solid states. This comes in contrast to conventional nano-scale electronic parts in devices like smartphones, that are solid, static objects that once designed and built cannot transform into anything else. This recent finding could fundamentally change the nature of electronic devices, as well as the way scientists research atomic-scale quantum materials. 

 Schematic of an hBN-encapsulated graphene device with a local graphite back gate and flexible serpentine leads connected to the movable QPC top gates (metal contacts to the graphene and graphite not shown). Image from Science Advances

“What we discovered is that for a particular set of materials, you can make nano-scale electronic devices that aren’t stuck together,” said Javier Sanchez-Yamagishi, an assistant professor of physics & astronomy whose lab performed the new research. “The parts can move, and so that allows us to modify the size and shape of a device after it’s been made.”

Australia-based First Graphene (FGR) will be kicking off one of the world’s largest graphene-enhanced green cement trials, supported by the UK Government’s £66 million Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) program. FGR is leading the consortium running the trial, which also involves Breedon Cement, Morgan Sindall and the University of Manchester.

Receiving significant funding from Innovate UK through a £190,034 grant, graphene will be added to the cement production line using a range of additions methods with minimal changes to the existing plant. A key aim of the trial is to find a simple, low-cost method of introducing graphene to
industrial scale cement production processes.

The Chinese Graphene Industry Association (CGIA) was established in 2013, to help promote the graphene industry in China, and has grown to over 150 members today. Recently we talked with Minyang Lu, Deputy Secretary-General of the CGIA. Major in charge of international cooperation, some domestic projects cooperation and organizing of the GRAPCHINA conference.

Q: Hello Minyang. The CGIA has grown to be the leading graphene trade organization in China, with over 150 members. Can you describe the CGIA's main activities and work?

China Innovation Alliance of the Graphene Industry – CGIA - was established on 13th of July 2013 in Beijing. It is a consortium of industrialized enterprises, academic institutions, and research organizations that are devoted to the research and development of graphene and graphene based products. The CGIA was established in order fulfill the needs of its members and their common interests, improve industrial technology innovation, and assist with legal contracts.

France-based start-up Carbon Waters, specializing in the development and production of lines of high-performance industrial additives, has announced it has raised 2 million euros to industrialize its graphene-based high-performance additives production process. Carbon Waters will be ramping up its industrial production with a new pilot factory.

Carbon Waters’ unique dispersed graphene production process is at the heart of its innovation. The process allows the company to provide industrialists with “ready to use” product lines. Four years of R&D and €3 million of investment in the process have already produced two patents, with a third one on the way.

Graphene conducts electricity well – too well, in fact, to be useful in microelectronic technology. But by sandwiching graphene between two layers of boron nitride, which also has a hexagonal pattern, a moiré pattern results. The presence of this pattern is accompanied by dramatic changes in the properties of the graphene, essentially turning what would normally be a conducting material into one with (semiconductor-like) properties that are more amenable to use in advanced microelectronics. But in order to harness this potential for industrial use, there is first a need to better understand the dynamics. 

Researchers from University at Buffalo, Japan's National Institute for Materials Science and Chiba University, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Thailand's King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang and Korea's Sungkyunkwan University have chosen a strategy of rapid electrical pulsing to drive carriers in graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) heterostructures deep into the dissipative limit of strong electron-phonon coupling. By using electrical gating to move the chemical potential through the “Moiré bands”, they show a cyclical evolution between metallic and semiconducting states. The team's results demonstrate how a treatment of the dynamics of both hot carriers and hot phonons is essential to understanding the properties of functional graphene superlattices. 

Germa specialty chemicals company, Evonik, has invested (through its venture capital unit, Evonik Venture Capital (EVC)) in Chinese battery specialist SuperC. The Chinese company develops and produces graphene materials that improve the range, robustness, charging speed, and service life of lithium-ion batteries, aiming to solve key limitations of electric vehicles and accelerate the shift to climate-friendly mobility.

"By investing in SuperC, we are supporting a cutting-edge technology with a promising future. High-performance batteries are a crucial factor in accelerating the electrification of road transport and permanently reducing CO₂ emissions," says Bernhard Mohr, head of Evonik's venture capital unit. The investment was made by the Sustainability Tech Fund launched in 2022, which has a total investment volume of €150 million. The Group is thus also strengthening its sustainability goals by investing in an innovative technology and business model. The focus of the fund is on new technologies to reduce emissions as well as innovations that complement Evonik's Next Generation Solutions.

Today we published a new edition of our Graphene Batteries Market Report, with all the latest information. The batteries market is extremely active, as demand from EVs and mobile applications increases research and development efforts, and graphene is seen as a potential material to increase capacity, decrease charging times and improve other performance metrics. Indeed the new edition contains over 10 new updates, with recent achievements and projects.

Reading this report, you'll learn all about:

• The advantages of using graphene in batteries
• The different ways graphene can be used in batteries
• Various types of graphene materials
• What's on the market today

The report package also provides:

• A list of all graphene companies involved with batteries
• Detailed specifications of graphene-enhanced anode materials
• Personal contact details into most graphene developers
• Free updates for a year

This Graphene Batteries market report provides a great introduction to graphene materials used in the batteries market, and covers everything you need to know about graphene in this niche. This is a great guide for anyone involved with the battery market, nanomaterials, electric vehicles and mobile devices.