ImagineNano 2015 lights the way for the graphene industry

ImagineNano 2015 was Europe's largest nanotechnology event of the year. Graphenea took part on several grounds, including an exhibition booth, an invited talk at the Industrial Forum, participation in collaboration meetings, and chairing oral sessions.

ImagineNano, the series of events covering latest developments of nanotechnology, nanoscience, and nanobusiness, was held this year in Bilbao, Spain, very near our headquarters at San Sebastian. The event consisted of several conferences held in parallel at the Bilbao Exhibition Center, including Graphene 2015 and an Industrial Forum, where industry leaders discussed recent progress and issues that nanotechnology faces on the road to commercialization.

An entire day of the Industrial Forum was dedicated to graphene, where our Business Development Director Iñigo Charola gave a talk about “Advances in Technology Development for the Production and Applications of Graphene Materials”.

After an introduction to the company, Iñigo discussed our graphene oxide line of products, their potential uses in the society and the obstacles to be overcome on the road to commercialization. Graphene oxide (GO) is known for its superlative mechanical properties, and as such the most promising potential applications are those that make use of GO as an additive, for example in composites, in electrostatic painting, enhancement of construction materials, etc. Challenges to be overcome are, of course, further reducing the price of the material to match competing technologies, and in parallel working on modifying GO technology to comply with established technological solutions in each user industry.

Importantly, Iñigo announced that the Graphene Flagship, the billion-euro graphene project funded by the European Commission, has established a standardization committee. The first aim of the committee will be to deliver a publication within a year about standard methods of characterizing graphene. The end goal of the standardization effort is to produce a database of the various forms of graphene with all their properties and ways of measuring those properties, so that graphene sellers can properly categorize their products and buyers can know exactly what they are about to buy. Currently there is no established standard for graphene, which introduces confusion to the market. Graphenea is on the standardization committee, as the largest graphene supplier in the Flagship program.

The Graphenea stand at the exhibit was very well visited and several potential collaborations were initiated over coffee and lunch provided by the organizing Phantoms Foundation. Specifically designed meetings and brokerage events at the fringes of the conference also provided a great opportunity to deepen networking activities. Graphenea will continue to show presence in the graphene community events, for example at Graphene & 2D Materials LIVE! in Berlin next month. Iñigo Charola will also speak at that event.