In the United Kingdom, the University of Manchester has used Circa Group’s biobased solvent Cyrene to produce the highest-quality graphene ink ever achieved.
According to Circa, the findings have “far-reaching commercial applications and open up multi-million-euro market opportunities for graphene in applications such as advanced composites and polymers, coatings, batteries and supercapacitors, 3D printed materials and functional fluids. More specifically, graphene inks can directly be applied to materials like textile and paper and used in many applications including transistors, sensors, antennas, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and wearable electronics.”
Produced from cellulose, Circa’s Cyrene was able to outperform traditional solvents, including the toxic chemical N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone.
The work, entitled “Sustainable production of highly conductive multilayer graphene ink for wireless connectivity and IoT applications,” was published in a recent issue of Nature Communications.
Circa converts waste biomass into advanced biochemicals at its prototype plant in Tasmania in a joint venture with Norske Skog. The company’s products include biosolvents, flavors, and biopolymers.