With just over a month to go until Graphene & 2D Materials USA 2019, IDTechEx's Senior Technology Analyst, Dr Richard Collins caught up with Dr Youn-Su Kim of LG Electronics Inc. to hear his thoughts on the growth of CVD graphene and the graphene market.
How does the growth and transfer of your Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) process work?
"LGE produce the highest quality of large area CVD graphene via the Vertical Roll to Roll CVD process. The 150mm width size of Cu roll is now in pilot production, and the maximum size of 420mm Cu roll will be mass-produced in the next year. The CVD graphene is transferred onto the target substrate via a dry and wet transfer process using Thermal release tape and PMMA respectively."
What are the key properties of your CVD grown graphene?
"LGE produce CVD graphene of a high quality and good uniformity. The applied tension and optimized process conditions enable us to achieve the high quality with the hall mobility of avg. 3,200 cm2/V.s and good uniformity of grain size, surface resistance and multilayer defect with less than ± 10% standard deviations. Furthermore, LGE has a well established Quality Control process. LGE's very strict quality control secure the quality and uniformity of CVD graphene."
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for your graphene in the medium and long term?
"The CVD graphene has big potential. We believe that graphene could change our life in the future. Until now, CVD graphene does not have killer application yet. LGE expects the opportunity in electric devices using its excellent electrical properties. The bio application using bio-compatibility electrical and mechanical properties would be a big opportunity as well."
What are your biggest hurdles to commercial success?
"The biggest obstacles in order to get on the market are price, quality, equality and mass production. The second problem is that the killer application of CVD graphene does not exist in the market."
Do you think the, often mentioned, "tipping point" for the graphene market is approaching for CVD graphene?
"I believe that the commericalization of CVD graphene based applications will be realized soon. There are many research and development projects world wide and the possibility of CVD graphene based applications are exhibited. The quality and production capacity of CVD graphene materials should be also improved. We expect mass commercial products in the area of flexible devices and bio applications utilising the unique performance of CVD graphene."
What do you hope to gain from the IDTechEx Show!?
"It will be a good network opportunity with global companies. We expect to discuss and find the chance to develop the CVD graphene applications."
