Unless you’re directly involved in graphene research and development, you might only have a vague notion of what this supposed “wonder material” is all about. Yes, you’ll remember the early excitement when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated graphene in 2004 and how, six years later, they won the Nobel Prize for Physics. But you could be forgiven for thinking all the noise about graphene was nothing more than media hype.
However, I recently came across a roadmap in the IOP Publishing journal 2D Materials (11 022002), which declared that the market for graphene applications could be worth $5.5bn by 2027. Now, from my experience, reports on markets for materials are seldom useful. If you tried to size the market for, say, silicon-related materials, you’re in danger of lumping in everything from optical fibres, electronics and solar cells to glass, building sand (silicon dioxide) and sunglasses too.
But this new report on graphene is excellent, with more than 200 detailed references. In fact, I think its aggregated estimation of the market size of graphene, which is based on 130 separate analyses, is probably about right. Sure, it’s not like you can buy graphene products on Amazon, but the applications are far more subtle and pervasive than you might think. Indeed, I’d say they follow the story line of the original hype relatively faithfully.
Written by Henning Döscher and colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe, Germany, the new report emerged from the EU’s huge €1bn Graphene Flagship project. It was launched in 2013 and tackled everything from examining the health impacts of graphene (nothing of major concern just in case you were worried) to developing applications and teasing out new markets for graphene.
To read more, click here.