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Credit: Haydale Limited
Haydale Limited ("Haydale"), and Cheap Tubes Inc ("CTi"), today announce that they have reached agreement for CTi to act as the exclusive agent for the supply of the Haydale HDPlas™ nano products in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Haydale's unique patented Split Plasma based technology enables the scaleable, environmentally friendly, exfoliation and purification of single and few layer friable Graphenes containing powders known as Graphene Nano Platelets ("GNPs") from mined graphite crystals. Under the agreement Haydale will supply its GNPs and Split Plasma treated Carbon Nano Tubes ("CNTs") which are now available from CTi under the brand HDPlas™.
Critically, organisations can now use the HDPlas™ product range for collaborative product prototyping and analysis. Haydale offers expertise in running pilot trials to evaluate the effect their friable GNPs have on the clients' materials and products and, crucially, assessing their suitability for large scale production. The key to subsequent take up by the client is the knowledge that there is a reliable, quality product available in commercial quantities.
As part of the agreement CTi will be exhibiting the HDPlas™ products and offering samples to attendees at the TechConnect World NSTI conference in Santa Clara on June 18- 21st.
"TechConnect has always been a fantastic trade show for us to exhibit our products at; please visit us at booth #506 to enquire about our HDPlas™ products" says CTI's President Mike Foley.
Haydale's Commercial Director Ray Gibbs said:
"The market is looking for ways of using the new wonder material Graphene and we believe that we have the process that can now supply both the research and commercial quantities required. Haydale is now able to supply HDPlas™ from stock in grams or kilos and is ready and able to take orders for tonnes to agreed delivery dates. CTi offers us a real means of quickly getting our quality products initially into the research community which is a vital part of our route to market strategy.
"Our cutting edge technology has been peer reviewed and we can now do "what it says on the tin". We have proven that we can personalise solutions to a client's specific needs in a cost effective, environmentally friendly and innovative way. Getting this right enables materials like our Graphenes to be effectively exploited and Haydales' technical capability coupled with the CTi sales breadth equips us both to meet these challenges"
Commenting on the agreement, CTi's President Mike Foley said:
"The agency agreement formalises a business relationship that has been ongoing for some time. There are a lot of synergies between our respective companies and our shared business philosophy of striving to act with integrity in everything we do will enable us to build our respective businesses on the foundation we already have in place.
The Haydale offerings have already been well received by our customer base and the breadth of innovative products they offer was critical in convincing us that we should take on the exclusive agency. The quality and competitive pricing for their GNPs and CNTs is a major enhancement to our range of materials that our clients can now access. I am confident that anyone trying a research quantity will want some more material once they have evaluated the HDPlas™ products. The real attraction is that the surface functionalities can be tailored to meet the requirements of our clients. In addition, the fact that Haydale can quickly supply more than kilos at the same high quality is a real plus for those looking to move into development phase and commercialise their product. We are delighted to formally add these top quality products to our product lines and I expect business to be brisk at the forthcoming TechConnect Conference."
Contacts for Further Information:
Ray Gibbs
(Haydale Commercial Director) Tel +44 (0)7836 776128
Mike Foley
(President Cheap Tubes Inc) Tel +1 802-254-6969
Trevor Phillips
(Media Relations Officer) Tel +44 (0)7889 153628
Notes to Editors:
About Haydale Limited
Innovative Carbon Limited ("ICL") was formed in April 2010 to acquire Haydale Limited ("Haydale") a specialist Research and Development business in South Wales. Prior to the purchase Haydale had developed the ability to treat nano scale carbon powders. The operation, with strong links with a number of leading UK Universities, had spent 7 years proving the concept and developing potential customer leads for a revolutionary way of cleaning, size reducing/de-agglomerating and surface engineering nano particles. ICL has since invested heavily in the technology, which is now ready for market.
The Haydale Split Plasma method has been designed to enable the take up of nano carbons and other nano powders as functional fillers. The barriers that Haydale has overcome in respect of GNPs are the same as for Carbon Nano Tubes ("CNTs") where the Split Plasma process performs these fundamental actions:
- Remove contamination: Fullerene powders suffer from undesirable production residues such as amorphous carbon, and residues from production catalysts that need to be removed to fully realize the properties of the material. The Haydale Split Plasma treatment preferentially etches non-crystalline materials such as; amorphous carbon, catalytic residues, and most other organic and inorganic contaminations.
- Surface Engineering: Fullerenes have inert surfaces making them not only difficult to cohesively bond into a matrix but also hard to mix uniformly. The Haydale Split Plasma processing can be used to improve compatibility between virtually any materials, aid wetting, improve dispersions, and enable covalent bonding. The Haydale technology opens the possibility to tailor virtually any surface with desirable chemical groups and allows dispersion to occur without the need for additional surfactants or dispersing agents.
- De-Agglomeration: Due to the manufacturing methods for both CNTs and GNPs, and the intrinsic nature of very small particles, these materials tend to agglomerate. To fully realise their properties, agglomerates must be deagglomerated and individual structures need to be liberated. De-agglomeration and exfoliation of CNTs and GNPs by the Haydale Split Plasma process have been independently proven. This method uniquely enables disentanglement of the nano structure without compromising the materials properties. The analysis has been conducted through SEM imagery, surface area analysis, particle size analysis, and decreases in bulk density.
The Haydale solution can also provide a range of additional offerings, including:
- Deposition: Plasma Enhanced CVD can be used to sputter molecular layers of most liquid and metallic chemicals onto surfaces. This could include metallic sputtering, or the polymerisation of a dispersant or coupling agent directly onto the surface of the nano material.
- Application Development: Taking great results from the nano to the macro has been one of the biggest challenges in nanotechnology. Haydale has developed its technology for application improvements successfully demonstrating enhancements in disperse-ability and dispersion stability leading to enhanced electrical and mechanical properties without the need for detrimental additional dispersant technologies
The aim of Haydale is to become the market leader in the provision of an enabling Split Plasma process for the CNT, Graphenes and general Fullerenes value chain. To achieve this Haydale will provide bespoke solutions to manufacturers of Carbon Powders (such as CNTs and Graphenes) as well as end users by focusing on:
- Unlocking the potential of Graphene and other carbon powders;
- Removing the barriers in carbon nano technology; and
- Supplying nano materials that work
Further details may be found at www.haydale.com
About Cheap Tubes Inc. www.cheaptubes.com
Cheap Tubes was founded by Mike Foley in 2005 to facilitate the commercialization of CNTs and other carbon materials. Since then the company has established a superb reputation as a supplier of high quality, competitively priced CNTs and GNPs. The operation, based in Vermont USA, has an unrivaled client base that includes are all the main research departments in universities, institutions and major global corporations.
About Graphene
Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov extracted single layer Graphene from bulk graphite at The University of Manchester in 2004 and were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Graphene, a novel two-dimensional material which can be seen as a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, is one of the world's most versatile materials. It is the strongest, thinnest, best conducting material known to science and its potential applications are vast. Since its discovery Graphene has generated enormous interest around the world with businesses looking at ways of converting the lab based work into commercial applications.
Industry is now looking to make use of Graphenes' outstanding mechanical enhancing and electrical properties given that it can potentially outperform that of steel and copper respectively. It is a transparent conductor, and combines both electrical and optical capabilities. This material could over time enable the development of high speed consumer electronics, information processing solutions, biosensors, super-capacitors that could be used in place of batteries, mechanical parts, and composites for cars and aircraft down to everyday consumer products ranging from inks and paints to textiles and floor coverings.