Graphene Flagship celebrates first birthday
The Graphene Flagship has had a running start in its first year. The main results of the initiative, summarized on the Flagship website, are impressive, both from a technological as well as an organizational standpoint. The Flagship, a €1 billion project funded by the European Commission, is in its ramp-up phase worth €54m, due to finish in March 2016. The main focus of the ramp-up phase is to create an organizational structure for a project this big, which will soon incorporate 142 partners in 23 countries. Still, as the administration heads are switching on their turbochargers, the research doesn't stop either and has born fruit that was hard to imagine a few years back.
Photo: Jari Kinaret, director of the Graphene Flagship, with European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes (Source: Graphene Flagship)
Among the top results of 2014 brought by Flagship partners are feats such as mass production of graphene with a simple apparatus resembling a kitchen blender, ultrafast graphene photodetectors integrated in a silicon-based photonic system, a flexible, printed touchscreen with graphene in its pixel backplane, and graphene anodes for batteries that show a 25% improvement compared to lithium-ion batteries. Remarkable as these results are, we can expect even more exciting graphene technology in the years to come, thanks in a large part to the Graphene Flagship.
The Flagship is one of two FETs – Future and Emerging Technology projects funded by the EC. The project is expected to run for ten years and to result in a coherent graphene community, with an efficient mechanism for bringing research results to the market. After the ramp-up phase, each year will be funded by €50m, with European businesses, Member States, and the partners themselves expected to provide as much investment as the EC.
Graphenea has positioned itself as the leading provider of graphene sheets in the project, excelling in the production of sheet graphene as well as graphene oxide and graphene powders. With the advance of commercialization of graphene, our traditional researcher customer base has been expanding to incorporate a growing number of businesses. As a company at the center of the graphene industry, we will keep you informed about the latest trends and developments in graphene research and commercialization.
