Taking the wonder material from Lab to Fab

Indro Mukerjee, Chairman

May 13, 2015

Graphene has been known as the wonder material for some years now. It’s very strong, very flexible and very conductive, which is a pretty fantastic combination, all in all.

Graphene is a really important material for the future of technology in general and the electronics industry in particular.

It has the potential to unlock new and better ways of doing things; to develop disruptive products; to offer up new supply chains.

Now, to be clear, it will continue to take time for graphene to get into the mainstream. First studied in 1947, this material has elicited a great deal of work and research and we haven’t crossed the final hurdle yet. However, that’s nothing to be embarrassed or cynical about. It’s just what happens with disruptive technologies.

Nevertheless, in the meantime we must not be or become comfortable to just look with wonder at the science, but rather consider what we can actually do with it.

For FlexEnable, the focus now has to be on getting graphene industrialised – the LAB to FAB journey, which leads to manufacturing and ultimately to products and markets.

Those of us who have developed disruptive, advanced materials into industrial reality know about the challenges and opportunities in going from Lab to Fab; we know about breakthroughs, trial and error and where to compromise as well as where to optimise.

The Lab to Fab journey is about determination, experience, creativity and humility. It’s about being in control of processes and knowing how to use partnerships to fill in missing parts of the jigsaw.

Last year, FlexEnable manufactured and demonstrated a flexible display actually made with graphene and last month we announced our participation in the Graphene Flagship (the EU’s biggest ever initiative in this field), as well as launching our Lab to Fab service to industrialise graphene at a major conference in the UK.

Graphene has a great future and now is the time to take this wonder material from Lab to Fab to help build that future.

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