ANKARA
A Turkish company with one of the world's largest graphene mass production facilities has developed a more efficient model of the material known as "super graphene" and has begun mass production and export.
Nanografi Nanotechnology Inc., which offers advanced technology materials, has taken its research on graphene -- a "miracle material" that has been the subject of a Nobel Prize -- to a new level.
The company has improved graphene -- a material 200 times stronger than steel and hundreds of times more conductive than copper and equally flexible and lightweight -- and has obtained "super graphene."
Yunus Emre Deli, business development director of Nanografi, told Anadolu that graphene has been one of the most talked about materials in the world for over a decade.
Deli recalled that they started work in this field in 2011 and by developing production models established one of the world's largest mass production facilities in Ankara in early 2020, emphasizing that product development work continued incessantly during production.
Noting that they have started producing new technological products, Deli said they exported their products to dozens of countries with competitive markets last year.
"We provided our products to universities, high-tech companies in Europe, and North America. Over 90% of our turnover was from exports. The customers of our products are generally high-tech universities and institutes,” he said.
"Leading high-tech companies in the world in various fields such as aerospace, the defense industry, electronics and chemical research are using products developed by Turkish engineers.”
Deli said that in the past 10 years, graphene, which was the subject of a Nobel Prize award and suddenly became the focus of world attention, has been the subject of significant debates and developments, and the material has started to be used in new products.
"Graphene is already used in various sectors worldwide in its current form. There are more producers than before. Chairs have been established at universities, and much larger funds have been allocated for R&D studies,” he said.
"The industry was looking for answers to how these studies could be integrated into the industry more quickly and how they could be used more effectively. We were working on solutions that could meet this demand, remove some handicaps in the product. There was a definition made for a 'holey graphene,' which could be called a different form of graphene, with new interventions in graphene, mainly with holes and gaps," he added.
He further explained that "the aim was to give new properties to graphene with these holes, and this mostly remained in academic publications. It was desired that such a product would emerge.”
“As Nanografi, with our R&D and infrastructure, we have been working on this product for a while, and we have developed a product that we call 'super graphene,' which is described as 'holey graphene' in academic publications. Because in terms of capabilities, we found that it has much more effective and competent performances than known graphene and shared this with the scientific community. With the data we obtained, we have achieved a product with ultra-high conductivity values, a much larger surface area, and much higher-quality electrochemical properties than known graphene."
3 times higher conductivity
Deli pointed out that this new form of graphene has almost three times more conductivity than the regular graphene, and the conductivity performance reached up to 16,500 microsiemens.
He also said they have developed a material with much larger surface areas and made the following evaluations about what "super graphene" will offer.
"In aerospace, electronic studies and energy storage systems, the most sought-after feature in a material is conductivity value. High conductivity allows the material and the system itself to carry a much higher current and transfer more data. On the other hand, by offering a much larger and active surface area, it provides a new active area, especially in membrane systems, battery studies and supercapacitors. With the improvement of electrochemical performances with super graphene, advantages have emerged, especially in battery and biosensor studies."
We have seen an increase in wearable, portable, and energy-efficient biosensor and gas sensor development, and especially with the use of super graphene, this progress is accelerating even more. At this stage, we can say that we have developed a version of graphene with superior characteristics, and we have produced it," he said.
Added value will double
Deli said they have integrated "super graphene" into mass production lines and accelerated their work on production that will serve high capacity and more users at lower costs.
Deli pointed out that graphene is a high-value-added product which only a limited number of countries and companies in the world can develop and use and said they have created a new material from carbon with their study.
He provided the following information about "super graphene.”
"We can say that with the improvement of the qualities and the increase in performance, the added value of super graphene is much further ahead and it will continue to advance. While we can offer a price of $1,000-$2,000 per kilogram for graphene used in the polymer industry, this can vary for electronic technologies."
Graphene can be customized for each use. At this level, the average prices are such that super graphene can find customers at a value of €1,380 per gram, according to Deli.
"We have already filled our eight-month capacity. We will further expand this capacity with a new production model in the near future. With these studies, a new export item has emerged for our country, and we have also improved the highest gram-based export value with this technology," he said.
"We recently made our first export to Australia. We believe that this will gain significant momentum in the rest of the world. Especially in electronics, medical studies we will see this. We have seen that with super graphene, DNA transfers, sequencing and design can be accelerated and made easier in medical studies. We know that graphene will be used much faster, tested in drug delivery systems, cancer treatment and biosensors, especially with super graphene -- both in terms of added value, the technological gains it will bring and the benefits of new technological products it will cause," he added.
*Writing by Alperen Aktas in Istanbul
