New tools for graphene growth by the Gladiator Consortium

​Due to its excellent properties, graphene is set to make an impact across a wide range of industries. Scalable production is one of the most important challenges. At Graphene Week in Athens, scientists from the European project Gladiator presented a new technique to monitor the growth of graphene, aiming to improve the quality and reduce the fabrication costs.

“Its properties have the potential to revolutionise existing products and open up new markets that will benefit our daily lives,” said Stergios Logothetidis, the Director of the Nanotechnology Lab LTFN and the Center for Printed and Organic Electronics in Hellas (COPE-H) (Greece).
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The PolyGraph Project produces graphene-reinforced polymers

Graphene can be used to make car seats and aircraft antenna protection enclosures lighter, which will reduce fuel consumption. These are just two examples of the uses of this material exhibited during Graphene Week in Athens, where companies and research centres presented their latest results.

Over 500 scientists and experts from 43 countries assembled for Graphene Week in Athens. Under the motto “the future meets the past”, experts presented the latest developments in graphene and related materials.
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Key to direct graphene transfer is the control of water intercalation

In new work, reported in ACS Applied Materials & Services (“Controlling Water Intercalation Is Key to a Direct Graphene Transfer”), researchers in Belgium demonstrate that interfacial water can insert between graphene and its growth substrate despite the hydrophobic behavior of graphene.

In their paper, the researchers discuss in detail graphene delamination from platinum (Pt) surfaces using electrochemical methods. They show that water intercalation between graphene and a Pt surface is critical to achieve a successful graphene delamination using an electrochemical method.

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Processability – Graphene Dispersion

The term ’processability’ can be defined as the ease with which polymers, whether neat or compounded, can be handled on…

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Processability: Graphene Dispersion

The term ’processability’ can be defined as the ease with which polymers, whether neat or compounded, can be handled on the manufacturing lines (i.e., in production operations and equipment), where the end-user manufacturer is primarily concerned with the processing quality of the polymer-based product, and is sensitive to factors that may affect the materials’ behavior and variability during the manufacturing steps. Understandably, the selection of (polymeric) materials for a specific application has to take into account not only the material suitability, but also its processability. A material having all the required properties to achieve satisfactory product performance, but not easily and economically processible, is often discarded.

 

Similarly, graphene processability is often cited as one key technical obstacle to overcome in in order to enable widespread uptake of graphene by industry. More specifically, it is the requirement to achieve cost-effective, stable and homogeneous dispersions of graphene without agglomeration, while ensuring strong interaction with the polymer matrix (Source: Fullerex Ltd.). In this regard, CealTech has the ability to bring all these elements together effectively, as illustrated in the schematic below, which shows the example of a project where we are investigating the use of graphene in rubber material, where rubber can refer to natural or polybutadiene rubber.

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The schematic above shows some of the methods we are evaluating in this project, including direct mixing, either mechanically or by using a solvent; or by functionalization (for more information, refer to our article about ‘Graphene Functionalization’). Needless to say that it is paramount with a stable and homogeneous dispersion throughout the project development, to achieve optimum properties and performance.

 

For more details, contact sales@cealtechdev.wpengine.com You can also keep on checking our website as we will be publishing routinely further update on the progress from the project mentioned in this article.

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