Materials
the way of concepts such as the graphene drinking straw, and that’s industry politics. “It’s a transformational technology and for traditional players who have always done things in certain ways – e.g. have always worked in steel or aluminium, when a new material comes along that completely changes the way you design things, that can be a big barrier to entry.
“There are two views today; there are people who see graphene as a big opportunity and people who see it as a huge threat. By working closely with partners from industry, we’re trying to bridge that ‘valley of death’ and increase the probability of success.”
Commercial interests Another organisation working with that aim in mind is the Graphene Special Interest Group (SIG), part of the UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN). Head of the Graphene SIG, Nabil Zahlan, explains that, “the Graphene SIG was established to be a focus point for the large UK-based community of individuals and organisations working to commercialise graphene.”
Zahlan echoes Baker’s thoughts on how graphene has been associated with many
applications based on its theoretical characteristics. He says: “Many of the functionalities have been demonstrated in the lab but few have appeared in commercial applications.” Due to interest in so many areas, Zahlan feels that “it is difficult to predict which applications will come next”. But he believes, “those that utilise the platelet format of graphene have an advantage of material availability.”
Zahlan thinks that what happens next in the story of graphene is “in the hands of application developers.” However, he does acknowledge the difficulty in encouraging commercial organisations to start this type of development work now.
“The main hurdle is the absence of evidence or conviction that graphene will deliver the promised functional advantage within actual applications at a competitive cost. It is likely that a number of the indicated applications could work, but the question of how the use of graphene will compare with incumbent and alternative technologies remains untested. To move closer to commercialisation, application developers need to address this question by considering and testing graphene within the application. This will allow the application developer to consider all aspects of the use of graphene, including its functional performance, its incorporation into the application and the cost of use; the advantage over alternatives must be demonstrated.”
Fig. 3. Researchers at Manchester University use electron- beam lithography to microfabricate graphene devices.
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R&D in Surrey Looking into these kind of issues for some highly specific applications is Professor Ravi Silva and his team at the Advanced Technology Institute of The University of Surrey, which is due to open a Graphene Research Centre shortly. He states: “We are interested in building on our experience in the development of carbon nanomaterials by integrating graphene into smart coatings solutions, and in particular, in microelectronics applications.
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