Special Report: The graphene coating market
There are already a diverse number of applications for graphene including surface coatings, fillers for plastics and electronics. Currently graphene sells for $50 to well over $10,000 (~€91,500) a gram but the market is counted in terms of kilograms. The development of graphene applications is currently stalled due to the poor quality and availability of commercial graphene supplies. This is set to change as research and development emphasis shifts from applications to supply. Given the funding and technology state of graphene suppliers’ quality graphene from commercial sources is likely to be available at one to ten layers with flake sizes ranging from 1-10 micrometres, and purities greater than 96% at production rates of about 100kg per year within the next calendar year. This means that the production bottleneck that has been holding back application commercialisation should be removed.
Typical timelines to bring a product to commercialisation is about 18 months, meaning that graphene products should become available late in 2017 or early in 2018, assuming that the graphene producers can ramp up enough production. It is likely that full market penetration will take another five to ten years, once this occurs the final value of the graphene for the coating industry will likely be around 300 tonnes with a value of $12bn annually, not including fabrics or many future unknown applications.
All three of the broad application classifications: coatings, fillers and electronics, will probably be developed. While the market for each of the class will be significant this report only concentrates on the coatings. Generally, these coats can be divided into two: hydrophobic surfaces and conductive surfaces.
Hydrophobic surfaces are treated with a graphene ‘paint’ to make them repel water. Examples of use are ship and boat hulls, liners of pots and pans, glass surfaces to repel water (bathrooms, windshields and so on) or chemical reaction vessels. It could also be applied to fabrics as a water repellent and many other surfaces. Some of these applications could be opaque; such as boats, pans, reaction vessels and so on, while other applications will require transparency such as window or windshields. The total market for this is very large.
Example A: The total automobile production is on the order of 80 million per year. This corresponds to about 240 million square metres of glass per year. Applied to the inner surfaces (anti-fog) and the front surface (no windshield wipers required) would require about 300 million square meters of surface area at about $20 per metre, for a total graphene value of $6bn (200 tonnes).
Example B: Bathroom glass (showers, mirrors and windows) represents a market that is also hundreds of millions of metres squared, but is only likely to be applied to the upper end glass and probably represents a market about one-tenth the size of the automobile industry, or about $600m (20 tonnes).
Example C: Graphene applied to the surface of fabrics would make the material it covers waterproof, but also conductive. The creative application of graphene could be used in many unique ways. Assuming just the hydrophobic surfaces, at one square metre each for one billion people would give a market value one hundred times the size of the glass market, and ten times the size of the automobile markets. Fabrics are not included in market summaries as the price point would be significantly lower than the other applications, thus will only be developed for high value niche segments of the this market.
These and other examples, without fabrics, are summarised below:
| Industry | Value (millions) | Graphene (tonnes) |
| Automobile | 6,000 | 240 |
| Glass | 600 | 24 |
| Marine | 300 | 12 |
| Aerospace | 150 | 6 |
| Chemical industry | 50 | 2 |
| Total | 7,100 | 282 |
Surfaces that could treated with graphene paint to make them electrically conductive include items such as telephones, tablets, computers and television screens. Low quality surfaces will be about the same price as hydrophobic surfaces. However, to get good transmission of light a lower number of layers will be required resulting in higher prices. The annual order of magnitude production is about 100 million **m2 of monitors a year including cell phones, tablets, computer monitors and television sets. These are summarised in the following table:
| Industry | Value (millions) | Graphene (tonnes) |
| Cell phones | 120 | 0.57 |
| Tablets | 140 | 0.66 |
| Computers | 1,200 | 5.71 |
| Televisions | 3,300 | 15.71 |
| Total | 4,760 | 22.66 |
Dr Ian Flint
COO
Elcora Resources Corp.
Maggie Ma
VP of Marketing
Elcora Resources Corp.
tel: +902 802 8847
