TLG - Media, page-15458

Good question rae915 but not an easy answer as the definition of graphene has been changing rapidly over time.

This is not my area of competency but I'll have a go and would welcome corrections to my understanding and "off the cuff" rambling.

The current definition of graphene now seems to be "a single sheet (1 layer) of hexagonally linked carbon atoms. The academics are strong on this, but agree that in practice they could accept 1-3 layers. This is not Talga territory. Their product has many more layers. How many? I'm not sure. My guess is 100-200 layers.

https://www.talgagroup.com/products/advanced-materials/ provides an older product definition by Talga which may not now be up to date.

Graphitic Materials Talphite™ is a high purity micro-graphite produced using Talga’s unique Swedish natural graphite and proprietary concentration process. It is a dry powder consisting of agglomerates of graphene flakes and graphene nanoplatelets, and can be used in battery anode and cathode products or as a pre-cursor to make graphene.

Graphene Additives Talga’s Talphene™ range of graphene products include nanoplatelets to few-layer graphene produced in both dispersion and powder form. These flakes have extremely high surface areas and use Talga’s functionalisation technology and proprietary low cost, highly scalable manufacturing methods to match customer material goals

1 layer graphene (1 atom) is .345 nanometers thick
100 layers are 30 nanometers thick.

All the academics seem to agree that the properties of the product change markedly as the number of layers increase and they get very upset when a graphite explorer floats the word graphene in their glossy when raising funds.

So what do the academics say we should call a product that above their 1-3 layers?

They seem to accept that up to 10 layers should be called nanoplatelets. Above that they have lost interest and currently argue that it is just graphite.

This sounds bad for Talga, but it shouldn't. They were playing round in this area of micro flake graphite (graphene?) long before the university academics discovered this graphene honey pot of research funding.

Also, Talga has always said that their interest was in a product that could sold by the tonne, to industry and not to universities by the gram. Talga has proved their graphene product (>100 layers) as a bending additive with the leading companies across a wide range of materials industries (plastics, cement, paper, inks, paints etc etc). All these projects proved successful in terms of product improvement but none generated an immediate opportunity for Talga. Which company wants to sell a razor blade that never gets blunt?

The difference now, is that Talga is an anode material company (or is soon to be) and a waste product from their production line will be fines smaller that that wanted. This is right in the territory of 100+ layer graphene. Better still, Talga knows exactly what this product should look like and where to head for the best margins. Not necessarily now to the industry leaders where they shared in their past research, but with an "off the shelf" product that would hugely excite the smaller players across that same range of industries who have ambitions of growth and are much quicker on their feet.

Sorry, this got to become a bit of a ramble and would be well understood by our long term holders but could be news to more recent share holders who are just now hearing the word graphene.