How amazing is graphene?

Analysts at JPMorgan recommended selling or "underweight" emerging market local currency sovereign debt because of the global impact of the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

JPMorgan estimated that fixed-income assets in emerging markets have lost 6-9 percent of their value since Russia invaded Ukraine a month ago, with nervousness about the war and its impact on global energy and food prices adding to existing pressures.

Some leading emerging market central banks are signaling that interest rates now need to rise faster than previously expected, which fuels fears of "stagflation". Stagflation means when high inflation and higher interest rates undermine economic growth.  

With both the U.S. Federal Reserve and emerging market central banks raising interest rates, JPMorgan also said it made sense to "underweight" emerging market assets by taking advantage of the recent pullback in local currency bond yields relative to TREASURIES.  

JPMorgan said major metals exporters such as South Africa, Chile, and Peru could still do well, but warned that emerging market fixed income assets now faced a more "stagflationary" trajectory.

The markets and prices of many commodities, metals, chemicals like the graphene still face uncertainty.

What is graphene
Graphene is a new material made up of a single layer of carbon atoms packed tightly together to form a hexagonal honeycomb lattice. In other words, it is a two-dimensional carbon material, an allotrope of the element carbon. 



Graphene has only 0.142 nanometers of molecular bonds and 0.335 nanometers of crystal plane spacing. It's much shorter than a bacterium, about four atoms in size. 
So far, graphene is the thinnest compound ever found. It is only one atom thick. It is also the lightest material and the best conductor of electricity in the world. 
 
Humans and graphene 
Graphene has been found in nature since 1948. But at the time, it was very difficult to separate graphene from the monolayer structure, because the graphene was all clumped together, and it was like graphite, and every millimeter of graphite contained about three million layers of graphene. 
So for a long time, graphene was thought to be nonexistent. 
It wasn't until 2004 that scientists Andrei Geim and Konstantin Voselov from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom found a way to isolate graphene. They found that if graphite sheets were peeled from highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite, they could be successfully separated by attaching the two sides of the sheets to a special tape and tearing the tape apart.
By doing this over and over again, you can make the sheets thinner and thinner, and you end up with a special sheet of carbon atoms, which is graphene. Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize for discovering graphene. 
 
The king of materials -- graphene 
When graphene was discovered, it completely changed the landscape of scientific research around the world. Because graphene turns out to be the thinnest material in the world, one gram of graphene is enough to cover a standard football pitch. 
In addition, graphene has excellent thermal and electrical properties. Pure, defection-free monolayer graphene has a high thermal conductivity of 5300W/ Mk, the highest thermal conductivity of any carbon material known to mankind. 
In addition, graphene conducts electricity very well. Graphene has a carrier mobility of 15,000m2/(Vs) at room temperature, which is more than 10 times that of silicon, the most commonly used material. 
Inside graphene, carbon atoms are arranged like barbed wire. This arrangement of atoms gives graphene its unique flexibility, making it harder than ever. In addition to the barbed wire and honeycomb structure formed by carbon atoms, each carbon atom is perpendicular to the orbital of the layer, resulting in the formation of large bonds that can penetrate atoms, which also gives graphene excellent thermal and electrical properties. 
 
Graphene applications
The discovery of graphene has not only opened the eyes of science to the possibility of the movement and action of various particles, but also changed our lives in many aspects.
 
New energy batteries are the first foothold for graphene technology. At present, the commonly used battery is the lithium battery. Although the lithium battery is enough to store a large amount of electric energy for our use, the disadvantage of lithium battery is that its wear is too serious, and each use of discharge and charging will make the life of lithium battery shorter. 
The application of graphene material greatly improves the capacity and charging efficiency of batteries, and it also plays an important role in improving battery life. If the graphene tin oxide layer is used as the anode of a lithium battery, the battery will last longer after being charged, and the battery will be used and recharged with very little loss. 
In summary, graphene can make batteries last longer and have higher capacity. 




In addition to batteries, graphene could also be used to make flexible materials because of its softness. One of the most representative is the flexible display. 
The South Korean institute has successfully produced flexible transparent displays using layers of graphene and fiberglass polyester sheets. Although the project is still under development and has not been put into actual production or market, according to the imagination of the project staff, perhaps one day, mobile phones equipped with flexible displays made of graphene will completely change the impression of "bricks" of mobile phones. Phones can be folded like silly putty. 
 
Graphene is also being used to protect the environment, most notably in desalination. 
Water interacts with the graphene to create a channel of just 0.9 nanometers across.  Molecules smaller than that can easily pass through the channel, while those larger get stuck. So, using graphene, you can remove the larger molecules of salt from seawater, so that the desalination of seawater can be successfully achieved. 
 
Because of its excellent properties and unique properties, graphene has made a lot of achievements in many scientific fields. 
 
Luoyang Tongrun Nano Technology Co. Ltd. (TRUNNANO) is a trusted global chemical material supplier & manufacturer with over 12-year-experience in providing super high-quality chemicals and Nanomaterials, including silicon powder, nitride powder, graphite powder, zinc sulfide, calcium nitride, 3D printing powder, etc.
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Prior to the impact of COVID-19 on the chemicals and materials industry and the price of the graphene, many industry observers expected low to flat growth in 2021 in all regions outside Asia, with many countries seeing slower growth compared to recent years. Operational excellence has long been a hallmark of the graphene chemical industry, and many companies are financially able to withstand short-term dips in end-market demand due to rapid leverage from reduced capex on hand.

The analysis shows that, whatever the final course of the pandemic, we can expect the inevitable long-term effects. Workplaces are expected to slowly return to pre-COVID-19 practices. Companies investing in enterprise-wide digital initiatives saw these "payoffs" in the early pandemic environment. For more information about graphene, please feel free to contact us.

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