Hi Shannon, I am not sure why you are so negative on the...

Hi Shannon,

I am not sure why you are so negative on the announcement. the research is co funded by First Graphene and the Australian Government. Its an eco friendly process that will open up the door to PureGraph being used in additional applications, (high end applications)

The following is from the Research paper.

"The use of ethanol as the reaction solvent instead of common organic solvents minimizes the chemical hazards exposure to humans and the environment. This direct attachment of multifunctional groups on the surface of pristine graphene is highly demanded for graphene ink formulations, coatings, adsorbents, sensors and supercapacitor applications."

The method is highly efficient, catalyst-free, simple, with mild reaction conditions for surface modifications, which may provide scalable production of the functional graphene materials. To eliminate the hazardous conditions commonly found in thiol-ene click reaction based on toxic solvents, herein, we introduce for the first time the use of ethanol/water mixture (70/30), which is less expensive, non-toxic and more environmentally friendly, to improve the scalability of highly dispersible functionalized graphene materials.

The process appears to be simple enough - the bold parts are the basic steps.

synthesis of functionalized graphene (FG-CYS) Functionalized graphene with L-cysteine ethyl ester (FG-CYS), was prepared according to the adapted procedure reported by Yap et al. [8]. In a typical procedure, 50 mg graphene powder was first dispersed in 100 ml ethanol–water mixture 70% (v/v) via sonication for 1 h. Subsequently, the sonicated mixture was purged with nitrogen gas for 30 min to create an inert environment. Then, L-cysteine ethyl ester and 2,2′-azobis-(2- methylpropionitrile) (AIBN) were added into the mixture with a further nitrogen gas purge for 30 min, followed by a 30 min sonication. After that, the reaction mixture was poured into a round bottom flask with an additional 30 min of nitrogen gas purge and heated in an oil bath at 65 °C under reflux conditions overnight. After the reaction, the assynthesized product was washed thoroughly with ethanol and deioni

I do agree it will have little impact on the SP now, but it may result license fees (from other graphene companies) and future revenue from applications that are not our 5 core pillars.