Zenyatta’s Albany Graphite Easy to Convert to Graphene: Tokyo Tech

Zenyatta Ventures (TSXV:ZEN) announced that Japanese researchers published findings that link particle size to producing graphene from graphite through exfoliation.

Notably, the researchers also concluded that the exfoliation productivity of graphite derived from Zenyatta’s Albany deposit in Ontario, Canada performed up to 1,500 percent better than the reference flake graphite materials used by the researchers.

Highlights from the release are as follows:

• The main conclusion of the paper was that the smaller the feed graphite particle, the easier it is to exfoliate thus indicating that the graphite particle size is quite an important variable for successful exfoliation.

  • Exfoliation productivity of smaller Albany Graphite flakes performs up to 1500% better than the larger reference flake graphite materials.
  • Albany Graphite particles reach a 2 μm particle size with a standard milling process, while the reference flake graphite material could not mill below a 3 μm particle size as the graphite tends to agglomerate together.
  • It is concluded that the fine crystalline nature of Albany Graphite contributes to the relatively easy milling characteristics. This can be attributed to the unusual geological mode of formation (a rapid crystallization igneous process) which accounts for the superior crystallinity and overall quality of the graphite mineralization found in this unique deposit.

• Graphene exfoliated from Albany graphite produced material with the highest aspect ratio with an average thickness of 2.0 nm indicative of graphene with 2.4 layers.  Also, the optical absorbance of the Zenyatta graphene dispersion was 2-10 times better than the other 3 reference samples that were tested. This demonstrated that concentrated graphene dispersions can be easily produced from Albany Graphite. The resulting small and thin graphene dispersion is suitable for printable inks.

Click here to read the full press release.