This Spanish firm is one of only a handful of companies in the world that manufactures graphene. Now in collaboration with Spain’s IK4-Tekniker technology center it is developing a system to automate production of this space age material.

Producing sheets of graphene is a difficult process given the nanometric characteristics of this material. That’s why Graphenea,a company located in the CIC nanoGUNE research center and one of only a few in the world that manufactures this material, has joined forces with the IK4-TEKNIKER technology center in order to design a more automated production process that is reliable and scalable.

Graphene sheets are usually made with a technology called Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), which deposits gaseous reactants onto a substrate. The graphene is deposited on a copper plate when the vapor in which it is carried evaporates. One of the problems the company experienced with this process is that it is highly manual.

In order to deal with this problem, the technology center’s department of design, manufacturing and assembly joined together with Graphenea to design a system that transfers the graphene from a sheet of copper to a sheet of silicon, which is a key material for the electronics industry. Multiple chemical baths are employed to dissolve the copper and enable depositing the graphene on the silicon.

Graphene is pure carbon in the form of a sheet only one atom thick. It is perhaps the material on which the world’s industrial sector has placed its highest hopes, thanks to its immense number of possible applications and numerous advantageous properties. Graphene is flexible, 200 times stronger than steel and five times lighter.