Graphene: Unknown at K 2016

K 2016, the biggest plastics and rubber trade fair worldwide, held from 19th to 26th October 2016 was a grand success with 230,000 trade visitors from over 160 countries. The plastics and rubber industries presented their entire performance spectrum and a whole diversity of innovative applications. There were 3,285 exhibitors from all continents who introduced their latest development.

Surprisingly, there was not a single product exhibited using graphene, the wonder material. There were only three companies that were selling graphene as a raw material. Most of the companies never even heard about graphene. The important question is why? There are many answers to this question and few of them were put forward by the companies themselves: 1) Bottlenecks in large scale production of graphene 2) Lack of standards in graphene production 3) Low hanging application such as composites and coatings are still at R&D stage 4) Lack of knowledge dissemination about the material etc.

Centre for Advance 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre at National University of Singapore are working towards solving all the above issues. More on this in the upcoming blog posts.

We hope to joins hands and make graphene a success by K 2019!