NANJING, July 7 (Xinhua) -- China's graphene industry is still at the early phase of development, and it will take at least 5 to 10 year for the industry to get matured, according to the 2016-2017 China Graphene Development Report, released on Wednesday by China Economic Information Service.
Graphene, nicknamed "black gold" and "king of new material", is the thinnest and strongest nanomaterial that can most efficiently conduct heat and electricity. The 2017 World Graphene Innovation Conference was held from Thursday to Friday inChangzhou, east China's Jiangsu province, exhibiting the latest graphene technologies and application.
According to the report, graphene development was largely within laboratories from 2004 to 2013. Main products included transistors, modulators and contact tubes. Initial commercialization of graphene products started in 2013. However, the under-developed techniques hindered the process.
The report shows that China's graphene market exceeded 4 billion yuan in 2016, near 10 times of that in 2015. The sales value of graphene-related products reached 3 billion yuan in 2016. According to the China Innovation Alliance of the Graphene Industry (CGIA), China's graphene market will expand rapidly in 2017, with market value likely exceeding 10 billion yuan. China is expected to become the world's largest graphene consumer.
By the end of 2016, China's graphene industry has formed six sub-sectors, including new energy application, health application, composite material application, energy conservation and environmental protection application, graphene raw material, and graphene equipment. Of these six sub-sectors, new energy application developed most rapidly, with market value exceeding 2 billion yuan in 2016.
The number of graphene companies started to surge in 2016. A total of 704 graphene companies were founded in the year, up 113 percent year on year on. However, only 125 out of those 704 graphene companies have business revenues and the rest of them focus on R&D.
Around 43 percent of China's graphene companies focus on R&D and 20 percent on sales. Graphene companies dealing with technical service, application, production and investment account for 16 percent, 10 percent, 7 percent and 4 percent respectively.China currently has 9 graphene testing companies, accounting for 0.4 percent of the total graphene companies in the country. (Edited by Huang Xiaolan, huangxiaolan@xinhua.org)
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