POHANG — North Gyeongsang Province and the city of Pohang are stepping up cooperation among industry, academia, research institutes and government to turn graphene technology, often called a dream material, into commercial products.
The province said on the 14th that it held a launch ceremony for the K-Graphene Commercialization Council that day at the Nano Convergence Technology Institute of POSTECH, attended by related organizations.
Graphene offers superior electrical and thermal properties, making it applicable to a wide range of industries including semiconductors, heat-dissipation materials and transparent electrodes.
But companies need facilities for process validation, testing and certification to move research results into products and mass production.
The council will link the technology and capabilities of industry, academia, research institutes and government to support that work, addressing commercialization hurdles and helping companies develop and commercialize products.
The ceremony also introduced a K-Graphene contract manufacturing facility being pursued by the province, the city and the POSTECH institute.
The facility will provide space at the institute for graphene research organizations and companies, and will draw on the institute's existing facilities and equipment to support prototype production, process validation, testing and certification.
It amounts to a graphene-specialized public support facility aimed at easing the difficulty companies face in securing mass-production equipment and validation environments.
In June, the province was selected in a Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy competition for industrial innovation technology infrastructure projects, with a plan to build artificial intelligence-based validation infrastructure for materials and components using graphene and two-dimensional nanomaterials, and is now developing the facility.
By 2030, 14.7 billion won will be invested to install large-scale graphene mass-production and analysis equipment at the institute and to support AI-based manufacturing processes and the development of application component technologies.
"With the council at the center, we will bring together Pohang's research capabilities and advanced infrastructure, and build step by step an industrial ecosystem that runs from validation of graphene materials and components through to product development and commercialization," said Yang Kum-hee, vice governor for economic affairs of North Gyeongsang Province.
