Tag Archives: graphene

Agensi Inovasi Malaysia and Graphene Nanochem team up to develop innovation hub

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Panel discussion featuring the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, and Graphene Nanochem CEO, Jespal Deol.

Panel discussion featuring (left) the Prime Minister of Malaysia – Najib Razak – and Jespal Deol, CEO of Graphene Nanochem.

Speaking this week at the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) in London, UK, Dato’ Jespal Deol, CEO of Graphene Nanochem, which has manufacturing plants in Malaysia, described how a graphene hub could build on product success in the oil and gas industry and bring innovation to other tech sectors.

The company makes speciality chemicals and advanced nanomaterials from renewable sources including waste materials, which goes hand-in-hand with Malaysia’s focus on using agricultural biomass as a feedstock for high-value products (National Biomass Strategy 2020: New wealth creation for Malaysia’s biomass industry – PDF download).

Deol, a lawyer by training, has a methodical approach to building a business based on graphene. “You need to assure the financial community that this is a viable product,” he told the audience. “You need to demonstrate supply side capability and product know-how”.

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Webinar round-up: no one-size-fits-all solution for transparent conductive films

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Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, head of consulting at market analyst IDTechEx, told attendees at yesterday’s webinar that there is currently no one-size-fits-all solution for transparent conductive films (TCFs), and new and expanding applications are opening up the market to include a range of materials.

One such driver is the demand for touchscreens, and although indium tin oxide (ITO) deposited on glass remains the dominant technology, it is being challenged on a number of fronts – for example, larger display sizes require films with lower sheet-resistance to manage current flow. Also, displays that are designed to bend or flex present another set of problems for touchscreen makers.

Ghaffarzadeh pointed out that switching from ITO-on-glass to ITO-on-film is one option, but for applications that require tight bending radii or for devices that are designed to flex many times, developers will have to consider alternative materials.

Here, graphene could be one to watch, especially given recent developments in roll-to-roll production (a topic covered on TMR+ last month). The material is flexible and robust, but these properties need to be matched by other parts of the device for the final package to be a success.

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Roll-to-roll production could ramp up market opportunities for graphene

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Graphene Frontiers, a spinout from the University of Pennsylvania, US, has been awarded $745k from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to demonstrate and develop roll-to-roll production of continuous graphene film.

The company, founded in 2011, is using atmospheric-pressure chemical vapour deposition to produce graphene on continuous tapes of copper foil passed through a growth region. This eliminates the need for an expensive vacuum furnace and enables fabrication of graphene films larger than the furnace size.

The funding will allow the firm to show that these sheets can be transferred from the metal catalyst to nearly any smooth surface without any high-temperature steps and without the use of harsh chemicals. It’s also worth noting that the transfer process preserves the original metal substrate for reuse, which both lowers production costs and reduces waste.

Attracting investment
The award is part of the NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research programme, which recognizes “transformational technology with significant societal or commercial impact” – a phrase that could almost be a tagline for graphene, or at least that’s the hope.

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