Summary

• Graphene-related materials take a wide range of types, grades and forms, each with their own commercial outlook. There is some progression towards standardisation and safety legislation/qualification, but this challenge still prevails. Extensive analysis and benchmarking studies are shown in the report across the complete range of graphene materials.

• Graphene nanoplatelets (GNP), graphene oxide (GO), and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) are the closest forms to significant commercial uptake. There are increasing signs that we are now in the rapid growth phase, with significant applications observed for polymer composites for automotive, heatspreaders for smartphones, industrial elastomers, anti-corrosion coatings and many more.

• There is no "best graphene" with each application having different multifunctional requirements, the end-users now accept that the winning materials cannot be determined a priori as final application-level results are influenced by many parameters such as graphene morphology and purity. Players understand there is key know-how in both dispersing graphene and introducing valuable functionality, companies are competing to fill that crucial stage of the value chain (externally and in-house) to provide a range of intermediate products.

• There are numerous strengths and weaknesses to the different graphene production processes with top-down approaches of liquid phase exfoliation and oxidation-reduction processes dominant. The report explores these processes in detail and also explores emerging alternatives looking to use alternate feedstocks, improve the efficiency and/or enhance the final product.

• There are a very large number of graphene manufacturers, which will not be the case in the long term as major success will result in consolidation - with the first signs having been reported. This report tracks the manufacturers' progress in detail including their revenue, profitability, capacity, price, properties, partnerships and more. China has become a significant territory in terms of production capacity and research, which is explored throughout the report.

• Our data suggest that revenue for graphene companies has been rising steadily for many years and this will accelerate as we pass through this inflection point. The rise, however, has not always been accompanied with increasing profit. Indeed, the industry, as a whole, is still loss making with only a handful of profitable companies and certainly some disillusionment arising as a result. Public and private funding still plays an important part of this nascent industry; this is tracked and discussed within the market report.

• Advanced materials often suffer from being a material push rather than a market pull. The report looks at key sectors in detail to understand some of the business cases solving unmet needs. Market drivers include the necessity for improved thermal management, sustainability, lightweighting, product lifetime, and more.

• With such an extensive potential application list, a key question is: where will there be success? Composites, energy storage, concrete, coatings, thermal management, and textiles all represent a very large potential and promising results have been seen. An outlook on the revenue and volume progression can be seen in the chart below and this roadmap is discussed in detail throughout the report.

• Graphene films and wafers, typically grown via a CVD process, have had a very different history and outlook. Given the obvious potential, transistors and TCFs were extensively targeted, but the lack of band gap and high-performance incumbent materials challenges has led to an inevitable realisation of limitations. However, with manufacturing improvements and further developments, commercial successes are being observed mostly for sensors and optoelectronic applications. Expansions are being observed and the next 10-years looks very promising for certain key end-user markets.

• Overview of diverse grades of graphene material.
• Comparison with competitive material landscape.
• Analysis of 18 key application areas for graphene materials including pipeline and readiness levels.

• Benchmarking studies of material on the market.
• Trends in company revenue and profit/loss.
• Pricing evolutions, trends, and strategies worldwide for graphene.
• Nominal production capacity by supplier worldwide for graphene.

• Ten-year application-segmented market projections for graphene (in different forms) in volume and value.
• Segmented by 18 end-use applications.

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