IEEE Proceeding into business with graphene

With electronic applications high on the wish list for graphene researchers, it makes sense for the IEEE's premier journal to run a special issue on graphene. The July 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE, Volume 101 Issue 7, has 19 papers on the exploits of our wonder material.

The ‘guest editors’ for this issue, Elias Towe, Tomas Palacios and Maki Suemitsu, kick off the proceedings with their overview and the observation that, after a century on the sidelines, “the field is
now ready for serious consideration of graphene as an electronic material”. While they say that this issue of the journal sets out “to highlight some of the different devices and applications currently being pursued” is also has some interesting observations on what it will take to get these devices and applications into production. For example, the paper “Graphene Growth and Device Integration” talks about how you grow the stuff using chemical vapour deposition (CVD).

The special issue also goes beyond technology and engineering in the paper “Market Uptake Potential of Graphene as a Disruptive Material”. As its introduction says, this paper “assesses the commercial potential of graphene in large volume applications”. As the guest editors say “the paper focuses on applications where comparisons can be made with other existing materials that currently dominate particular market segments”. The paper’s authors say that they have concentrated on areas “where graphene may offer competitive advantage over incumbent materials”.

Henar Alcalde, who teaches business policy at Deusto University in Spain, and her colleagues say that thanks to its “rare combination of properties, graphene has the potential to be applied in many different fields such as electronics, optoelectronics, energy (solar, batteries, supercapacitors), touch screen and display technology, lighting, sensors, biotechnology, and composites”. But that is no guarantee that graphene will kick aside competing materials in any, let alone all, of these applications. As they add “for graphene to become a truly disruptive material, a number of other conditions have to be fulfilled”.

Perhaps it is because the authors include business researchers that makes their account an easy read. (They do, though, have one graphene insider among the authors, Amaia Zurutuza is the scientific director of the Spanish start-up Graphenea.) The technical stuff isn’t as much a part of their everyday activity as it is for for most of the the engineers and researchers who wrote the rest of the special issue. It is easy to follow their explanations of how graphene's properties give it an edge over existing materials for touch-screen panels and solar cells. The advantage is down to graphene’s flexibility and strength.

It will come as no surprise to read “The main disadvantage of graphene over some of the incumbent materials comes from the point of view of production costs since graphene is currently produced on a
laboratory scale.” But, as they say, give it time.

One good point in their account is where the paper talks about things that graphene can do that are beyond the powers of other materials.  Or, as the authors put it, the application of graphene “to latent user needs that have yet to become unlocked”.

As other technologies have shown, when an upstart threatens to oust a well established material, the old hand has a remarkable ability to keep one jump ahead. An obvious case here is the magnetic material used to store data in hard drives. The density of data on a disk just keeps going up, making it hard for alternatives to compete economically.

Applications where graphene isn’t competing with existing materials include the possibility of “rendering features and qualities to consumer products (such as foldability and flexibility to cell phones and television screens) as a form of ‘incremental innovation,’ leading to the supply of new value propositions on existing product-market combinations, and on the other hand, by giving way to the development of products that would not be possible without the use of graphene”.

Alcalde et al clearly believe that “the possibility of a broad-based uptake and application of graphene is very real”. But that will happen only if the materials proponents can deal with three issue:

• the cost, scalability, and reliability of graphene development/manufacturing
• getting the properties right for particular applications and providing something better than the alternatives
• the health and safety implications of nanotechnology in general and graphene in particular.

The last one is important. Graphene may not have the potential to arouse the same emotional heat as genetically modified food or fracking, but it doesn’t make sense to leave it until the products start to turn up in shops to tackle public acceptability. There is already a cadre of activists who see dangers in nanotechnology. As the paper says “the uptake of graphene depends on sociopolitical considerations:  health and safety regulations”.

As the paper puts it, lapsing into business speak, “The speed of adoption of new materials like graphene depends not only on technological progress in terms of making it fit for final products and putting it in place in production processes, but it also relies considerably on the awareness of the (superior) properties of graphene-based products on behalf of final consumers, so that demand vectors can take shape.” Anyone know what a ‘demand vector’ might be?

There is an interesting extra observation with implications for the politicians who are currently throwing money into graphene research in the hope that it will revive flagging economies. Innovation does not end when an idea emerges from the laboratory. You have to turn it into products and then find customers for them. As the paper puts it, it also depends on “whether the public sector acts strategically through its own public procurement mechanisms and industrial policy levers to support the uptake of graphene in the form of strategic (demonstration) projects, which can provide direction to and leverage private (research and commercialization) initiatives and thus pool resources, also setting out technological pathways and standards early on”.

How long will all this take? Alcalde et al give examples of other new materials that have taken 20 years or more to have an impact. They make the obvious statement that “the time to market will vary depending on the complexity of the application”. Graphene enthusiasts will warm to their statement that “in the case of graphene-based materials, the market incubation period may be considerably shorter than the traditional 20 years base rule”.

The money involved is massive. They reckon that the transparent conductor market “was estimated to be $2 billion in 2012”. And $1.5 billion of this went into indium tin oxide (ITO), one of the applications where graphene’s flexibility, not to mention its “very low light reflectance”, is superior for touch-screens, a rapidly rising technology. As they say “even a small percentage of this market could mean a considerable sales volume for graphene”.

There is another sign that graphene is unlike other new materials that have turned up promising to catalyse an industrial revolution. (Anyone else remember C60?) The material “shows a steeper patenting curve than other materials that have meanwhile reached a mainstream status for usage in industrial and product applications”. For the authors of this paper the sheer mass of activity and the patenting pattern “make it likely that graphene will turn out to be a disruptive material for many products and industries”.

What have academics ever done for us?

Is seems that academics can never do anything right, especially when it comes to their work with businesses. Companies complain that university “boffins” don’t want to know about the sort of science that makes money, and when they do show interest in how businesses work, they are dismissed for being out of touch.

The latest manifestation of the latter complaint shows in the responses to a news item on Times Higher Education (THE), Business schools unveil plans for enterprise research centre. The story itself is a straightforward report of plans by Warwick Business School and Aston Business School to set up a Enterprise Research Centre.

The announcement was one of a PR binge that the government went on to mark Global Entrepreneurship Week, in a desperate attempt to appear to be doing something about business. Aston University, in its announcement of the initiative, says “The new £2.9 million centre will become a national and international focal point for research, knowledge and expertise on small and medium-sized businesses.” What possible objection could there be to that?

Back at the THE, ‘whatalife’ whines “I do find these ‘setting up’ of Business Schools to encourage enterprise very amusing. The vast amount of academics could not run their own weekly shopping budget and yet they try to tell business men how to run a business.” Then we get another comment from yet another person who does not want to reveal their real identity, ‘John’, who adds “Coming from the industry, I wonder whether these academics from business school know about real world business at all, let alone doing research in this area.”

I wonder if any of the business people who slagged off business schools on the THE site have actually read any papers based on the academics' research. I regularly read and write about papers about R&D management, for example. While these publications rarely deliver staggering intellectual insights, they are much better than all those expensive consultants when it comes to providing details of what they have done and in analysing their material. They are certainly superior to the ‘make it up as you go along’ style of management that has brought many British companies to their knees.

You won’t read papers from commercial consultants, unlike academic who consult on the back of their research. The ‘borrow your watch to tell you the time’ brigade don't dare reveal their sources, lest the audience see that there is nothing there. Just read the bland articles that many commercial consultancies put on their websites.

Jibes about academics' inability to manage their shopping seem to fall into the trap of thinking that understanding something is the same as doing it. Academics understand how water flows through pipes – it is called fluid dynamics – but no one expects them to be great plumbers.

The independence of academics – and perhaps the fact that their primary motivation is not to re-package old ideas in the mode of some commercial consultants – means that they are free to talk at great length to many many managers, far more than a practitioner can hope to reach without shirking on their paid work.

Academics also have the advantage that they are not in competition with the businesses they study. Companies will say things to academic researchers that they would never put on the record and would certainly not say in front of a rival. As a result, academics are more likely to have a better understanding of what goes on in the business world than many of the wonderful managers who have been so successful in recent years.

Unlike, it seems, these critics, I have read papers from both Warwick Business School and Aston Business School. They have interesting things to say and have worked with some of the more successful business around. Putting the two together in this way makes sense, not least because they sit in the middle of an industrial hotspot, stuffed with just the sort of businesses that the Enterprise Research Centre will study.

I have no idea if business schools are any good at training managers, although there is evidence to suggest that they are not a complete waste of time. I wouldn't be surprised if they are less than great. But that isn't what the new centre is all about.

Business with the right chemistry

Ludwigshafen, home of BASF, the German chemical company, may not be the most bucolic location but the company's R&D facilities there are impressive. At least, they were when I last had a trip to join one of BASF's PR jollies.

Now we have some insights into the philosophy that currently underpins their R&D effort. BASF is into clusters. But as I say on Science|Business, the company's clusters are not the geographical variety that many observers of the R&D scene would recognise.

The real message is that BASF is one of a number of large technically advanced businesses that continues to spend oodles on R&D, even in these times of economic gloom. It is also interesting to see the company talking about adapting its research strategy rather than banging on about changes in its business structure.

Maybe it BASF does that too, but having seen other chemical companies go down the pan as they constantly restructure their business, while steadfastly saying nothing about research, it is encouraging to see them openly recognising the value of R&D.

Can R&D save the world's economy?

Buried in all the hand wringing about the collapse of the economy as we know it, a handful of folks are pushing for an economic revival built on technology, on R&D and brain power. The notion has even made it into corporate PR, as I found in the usual scour for ideas to feed LabNotes on Science|Business.

Ray O’Connor, president and CEO of a company that "designs and manufactures precise positioning products and solutions for the global surveying, construction, agriculture, civil engineering, mapping and GIS, asset management and mobile control markets," Topcon Positioning Systems, decided to have a rant in his "State of the Industry Message" about the need to continue spending on R&D even when the economy is at death's door. He is not alone, which is why it was worth writing R&D rides the recessionary bandwagon.

How does innovation work?

Like many countries, the UK has been screaming about the need for innovation. It is the only way to make the economy grow, says the official line. So Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have vied with one another to make the right noises about innovation and the science that, they believe, will make it happen. Spending more on science may not have quite the same Daily Mail appeal as throwing cash at health and education, but it has come out at least as well as these sinks of taxpayers' money. And yet we don't really know how innovation works.

If we did there would be no reason for the Economic and Social Research Council to launch a new initiative: £2 million for Targeted Initiative on Innovation. The money will go to "eight different research projects focusing on innovation". Among the things they will investigate are, says the announcement:

• How can the rate of innovation be increased to enhance economic growth and competitiveness, while the direction of innovation simultaneously steered to achieve social and environmental sustainability?
• What are the options for public policy at different levels to increase innovation and steer towards such policy objectives?
• What economic, social and managerial factors enable an economy such as the UK to best capture high value from increasingly global innovation processes?
• How is it best to model and measure emergent innovation activities and systems?
  

All this is happening under the banner of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. As a part of the same package, AIM, as it calls itself, has also awarded seven Innovation Fellowships. one area that these people will delve into is that of innovation in the service sector, something that recently cropped up on the agenda when the UK's R&D Scoreboard suddenly added the sector to its number crunching.

As the ESRC announcement puts it "with over 75% of employment in the UK now being located in services, we need to enhance our understanding of service innovation".

Another topic for discussion is "green innovation". It isn't enough, it seems for innovative stuff to be "sustainable". We also need to look at how it happens. Or, as the announcement puts it "can the rate of innovation be balanced with the need to achieve environmentally and socially sustainable levels of innovation?"