MANCHESTER City Council has given the go-ahead to the £60m Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) – a new two-acre state-of-the-art University of Manchester facility aimed to accelerate the transition of graphene from the lab to the marketplace.
Graphene is made of a single layer of carbon atoms and is one million times thinner than paper
The centre is to be located on Oxford Road by the Mancunian Way and has been designed by world-renowned New York-based ‘starchitect’ Rafael Viñoly – the man behind Man City’s new £200m football academy, London’s controversial ‘Walkie Talkie’ building and a much-publicized new circular bridge in Uruguay.
Alongside the recently opened £61m National Graphene Institute (NGI) and the planned £235m Sir Henry Royce Institute, the University states the industry-led GEIC will be ‘crucial in maintaining the UK’s world leading position in graphene and other 2-D material research’.
The GEIC is set to be completed by the end of 2017.
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Graphene Business Director James Baker said: “Already we are seeing a number of existing partnerships in the NGI start to develop some exciting graphene enabled concepts and applications and we will see this world-class research mature into the next phase of commercialisation in the GEIC and then support the development of a UK supply-chain for graphene products and applications.”
Martin Schröder, Vice President and Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences said “This is a wonderful facility that will develop our world-leading research to new products and markets in collaboration with key industrial partners. The GEIC will be a catalyst for industry-university partnerships that will drive innovation and invention of new applications for graphene.”
WHAT IS GRAPHENE?
- Graphene was first isolated at the University of Manchester in 2004 by two Russian émigré professors experimenting with graphite and sticky tape.
- It is made of a single layer of carbon atoms and is one million times thinner than paper - so thin it's considered to be the world's first 2D material.
- It is ultra-light yet 150-300 times stronger than steel- the strongest material ever measured
- It is as pliable as rubber and can stretch to over 100% of its length
- It can conduct 1000 times more electricity than copper
- It is fire resistant yet retains heat and has twice the thermal conductivity of diamond
The GEIC is partially funded by £15m from the Higher Education Funding Council England’s UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF), £5m from Innovate UK and £30m from Masdar, the Abu Dhabi based renewable energy company owned by Mubadala. The remaining £10m will be provided by other research funds and institutions.
