As co-exhibitor at Sweden Co-Lab at Hannover Messe 2019, materials start-up Graphmatech’s scientists have achieved world record values for conductive engineering plastics which has at least 100 times lower resistivity than achieved before in filaments for 3D printing. This is a further milestone in the success story of Graphmatech that began with the founding in 2017, led to the patented technology and material Aros Graphene, great collaborations with Swedish, Swiss and German key industries and an award as Nanotech company of the year in the Nordics in 2018.

 

The recently measured world record values built upon a scalable and cost-efficient process for coating polymer granular and powder with Aros Graphene for obtaining high-quality dispersion, that Graphmatech announced last summer. It made possible to develop a well-dispersed solution for Aros Graphene in plastics. This process is considered as a compounding step before extruding filaments for 3D printing or injection moulding. The developed process can be also used for coating polymer granular/powder with other types of additives such as metals, oxides, ceramics, fibres, etc.

 

The 3D printing technology of the ultra-conductive material Aros Graphene could revolutionise the way multifunctional materials and manufacturing technologies are used. With the new technology, it is possible to tailor the exact level of conductivity of the filament which opens up for a wide range of new possible applications that has never been possible with 3D printing before. The conductive filament can, for example, be used to produce circuit boards, shielding applications, electrostatics, sensors and other items for IoT applications.

 

Currently, the process is under scaling-up and first products are planned to be a highly conductive plastic filament for 3D printing, which will be launched in collaboration with the Swedish 3D filament producer AddNorth, as well as composite pellets/master batches for injection moulding, and other polymer manufacturing technologies.

 

Graphmatech was founded by materials scientist Dr. Mamoun Taher and serial entrepreneur Björn Lindh. The major investors of the company are ABB Technology Venture, InnoEnergy and the well-known business angel Jane Walerud.