Graphene: Isolated in Manchester, innovated in Britain

James Baker, Business Director for Graphene@Manchester writes about the forthcoming Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre following a recent visit to leading UK materials manufacturing facilities.

Last week the design team for the forthcoming Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) toured the facilities of three leading UK institutions to help inform the design of the University’s new £60m centre. 

The design team and I paid a visit to the home of theCentre for Process Innovation (CPI), Applied Graphene Materials (AGM) and Thomas Swan, all based in the North East of England. With the National Graphene Institute (NGI) set to open this year, thoughts are now turning to the next phase of establishing Graphene City® here in Manchester with the GEIC, due to open in 2017. Currently that means the design and functionality of the building and how it will actually work.

Where the NGI will be a world-leading research hub furthering the ground-breaking materials research at the University, the GEIC will fill a critical gap in the development of graphene. The two facilities will complement the advance of graphene and related 2-D materials bringing real-world applications to the commercial market sooner.

The infrastructure and critical mass of expertise is only one part of our goal to commercialise graphene however. We are also developing a culture of collaboration and partnership which will increase innovation and productivity. It is with this collaborative spirit in mind that I and the GEIC design team ventured up north.

We started the recce at Wilton Science Park, home to both CPI and AGM where we were met by CPI’s Tom Taylor, Director of Future Business and Peter Walsh, Head of Engineering along with Jon Mabbitt, CEO, AGM.

 

CPI is a technology-based technology innovation centre with particular focus on developing, prototyping and the scale-up of products and processes – hurdles which we are currently trying to overcome with graphene. AGM meanwhile, operate a commercial scale production facility producing high-quality graphene.

The tour also took in CPI’s fantastic NETPark facilitiy in County Durham. NETPark is a dedicated centre for electronic materials and devices including devices containing graphene. The visit to these test labs, chemical services areas and clean-rooms gave us an informative insight into how some vital parts of the GEIC could potentially function.

We then spent the afternoon at Thomas Swan’s Consett base to discuss process engineering, utilities, logistics, technology and safety requirements for a modern materials manufacturing facility. Thomas Swan is a supplier of high quality graphene and carbon nanomaterials.

Whilst visiting these impressive facilities I also spoke with Andy Goodwin, Commercial Director of the Advanced Materials Division for Thomas Swan. He spoke of partnership with academic centres as being essential to de-risk investment in materials science.

Having Thomas Swan on the GEIC advisory panel is fantastic given their history and innovative approach. CPI , AGM and Thomas Swan all helped to provide a valuable insight into their processes and inform our continuing concept and design of the GEIC.

On a recent visit to the University Chancellor George Osborne said that graphene, “presents tremendous opportunities with the potential to provide thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of further investment.”

We have already seen the first tranche of that investment but looking to the future, working now alongside collaborators, industrial partners and SMEs is how we all benefit as a whole. We want to ensure the remarkable breakthrough which began in Manchester, leads the way for the future British innovation.