At the beginning of December 2014, the GLADIATOR consortium celebrated its one-year anniversary since the start of the research project in November last year. The goal of GLADIATOR (Graphene Layers: Production, Characterization and Integration) is to improve the quality and size of CVD graphene layers and reduce their production costs within 42 months. This should make the use of graphene (e.g. in the field of transparent electrodes) more attractive.
Graphene as an alternative to ITO
The interest in graphene (known as "graphene") as an ITO substitute (ITO = indium tin oxide) is very high, but unfortunately mass production is not yet possible. GLADIATOR targets the global transparent electrode market.
Benefits of Graphene
With its project, the research group wants to show that graphene can compete with ITO in the areas of performance and cost:
- In the power range, because it delivers over 90% transparency and layer resistance below 10W/sq. m.
- In the cost area, because here the price per square meter will be less than 30 EUR. ITO is relatively expensive due to the high price of indium, which is only available in limited quantities.
More information about Graphene can be found in the following video from a TEDx Talk:
Members of the Gladiator Consortium
16 parties from 7 countries are part of the GLADIATOR consortium. More than half of them are companies, the rest are universities and research institutions. The research project is partly funded by the European Commission (FP7 grant agreement No 604000). Up-to-date information can be found on the GLADIATOR project website.
