{"id":18771,"date":"2022-03-04T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=18771"},"modified":"2024-09-04T20:10:43","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T19:10:43","slug":"graphene-flagship-commercialising-graphene-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/graphene-flagship-commercialising-graphene-innovation\/18771\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphene Flagship: The road to commercialising graphene innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"
Launched in 2013, the Graphene Flagship is one of the European Commission\u2019s Future and Emerging Technology Flagship projects. Since its inauguration, the Flagship has worked to advance graphene innovation with the aim of bringing the material out of the lab and onto the market.<\/p>\n
The Graphene Flagship is comprised of six divisions, with 19 Work Packages within these. The last year has been successful for the Flagship, having completed its second funding phase, Core 2, and moved into Core 3. With a budget of \u20ac150m from the European Commission, Core 3 aims to advance much closer to the commercialisation of graphene and layered materials within this phase.<\/p>\n
To explore the progress made in the last year and the expected future growth for graphene innovation, Innovation News Network <\/i>spoke to Professor Andrea Ferrari, Science and Technology Officer and Chair of the Management Panel of the Graphene Flagship.<\/p>\nIn 2020, the Graphene Flagship successfully finished Core 2 and progressed into Core 3. What does this mean for the project?<\/h3>\n
Core 2 ended in March 2020 and we are now about 20 months into Core 3, which will end in October 2023. We are focusing on more fundamental physics, in the sense of new materials, assembly, and properties. We have also developed new devices. The third area is innovation: bringing different architectures and devices within the technology readiness level to be ready to transition to a commercial development phase by the end of Core 3. This is achieved throughout the different science and technology Work Packages and, in particular, the Spearhead Projects. There are 11 Spearhead Projects, led by companies committed to specific targets related to device development.<\/p>\n
The Pilot Line for graphene and related materials is a key milestone for our work. It will be fully operational by 2024, enabling a variety of companies to benefit from expertise in graphene and related materials when they want to make devices. Most technology firms today rely on fabless manufacturing, where organisations are contracted to design and make devices on behalf of other companies. This will be a similar situation, where most companies could design integrated devices on silicon, for example, and then send them to the Pilot Line to deliver the functioning devices on a wafer scale.<\/p>\n
We have a Spearhead Project, with involvement from the likes of BMW, for the generation of high-energy batteries for automotive applications. Another of our partners, battery specialist VARTA, focuses particularly on batteries made from a mixture of silicon and graphene, with higher energy density and better performance than normal batteries. In addition, we have an entire Work Package dedicated to energy storage. Within this, different kinds of batteries, not just silicon graphene but also other architectures based on graphene and related materials, are investigated. This is a very important topic for the Graphene Flagship and is continuing in Core 3.<\/p>\n