Australian graphene and data analytics company Imagine Intelligent Materials claims to have developed a graphene coating material that, combined with the company’s edge-based signal processing devices, can harvest pressure, moisture, stress and temperature data from anywhere on a surface at a fraction of the cost previously possible.
It claims the new sensing technology is a major step up from its first product, imgne X3, launched in 2018 that was applied to geotextiles to enable leak detection in liners for tailings dams.
Imagine executive chairman, Chris Gilbey, said: “Imagine leverages the amazing electrical conductivity of graphene made in our Geelong factory and signals processing algorithms developed in our Finnish operation to deliver a low-cost sensing solution for an entire surface that will scale easily and efficiently.”
Image president Jaakko Kaidesoja said the company was developing applications that address needs in health care, buildings and automotive markets, where he claimed there to be “extraordinary potential.”
“Aging demographics and increased residential care mean there is an urgent need to monitor movements; to reduce the frequency of falls, to reduce the likelihood of bedsores and do this inexpensively and reliably.
“We can deliver improved sensing in automotive applications too, and are working on an after-market product that monitors stress in concrete in high rise buildings. Solving people problems is both the right thing to do and highly profitable.”
Imagine is the lead industrial partner in the Graphene Certification Labs, based at Swinburne University and also claims to have been the first Australian company to build a commercial scale graphene manufacturing capability the first company in the world to develop conductive geosynthetic materials using functionalised graphene and the first able to deliver large scale surface sensing using graphene.
Swinburne announced in October 2017 it would host the world’s first graphene certification centre as part of a Graphene Supply Chain CRC-P, saying it expected it to “enable volume manufacturing with graphene by supporting replicability and quality in manufacturing and connect Australian industry into the development of Industry 4.0 capability internationally.”
It said The initiative would take place at it Manufacturing Futures Research Institute and had been made possible by the Federal Government’s Collaborative Research Centres programme and partners included Imagine Intelligent Materials, Austeng, HRL, Agilent and Duromer.
Graphene: a history
Graphene is a one atom thick lattice of interconnected carbon atoms. It was observed in electron microscopes in 1962 but isolated only in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester, a discovery for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010
Since 2004 over 12,000 graphene related patents have been filed, and it is now produced in commercial quantities. Imagine IM claims to be able to produce up to 10 tonnes annually, and when 2630 square metres of the stuff weighs just one gramme.
Graphene has some unusual properties that make it particularly useful for certain IoT applications: it can be used to measure, temperature, moisture and stress all of which are reflected in changes in its electrical resistivity.
