Haydale, a wholly owned subsidiary of Innovative Carbon Limited, is a global leader in facilitating the commercial application of graphenes.

Haydale’s patented “Split Plasma” technology is a scalable and environmentally friendly method of producing high quality graphenes. Haydale’s HDPlas™ graphenes are currently supplied to over 100 leading research institutions worldwide, and are finding commercial applications in inks, sensors, energy storage, photovoltaics, composites, paints and coatings.

Haydale was established in 2003 as a spin out from Swansea University, providing nanomaterials to the advanced materials community. Haydale initially focused on purifying and liberating carbon nanotubes (CNTs), allowing them to be surface engineered for integration into host membranes or matrices. The company was acquired in April 2010 by Innovative Carbon Limited, and holds a substantial patent portfolio in the production, processing and application of carbon nanomaterials.

Haydale’s high level of expertise in carbon nanomaterials was subsequently applied to converting mined graphite ore into graphenes with the development of the “Split Plasma” process, a versatile and scalable method of producing high quality graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs).

Haydale’s patented “Split Plasma” process is significantly quicker and substantially more cost efficient than alternative methods of producing graphene nanoplatelets. It is both environmentally friendly and produces higher quality materials than competing technologies – current “wet” methods use acid based processes as a cleaning and oxidising agent which inevitably damages the walls of the nanostructures, degrading their structural integrity and mechanical strength. Critically it is often found that wet chemistry or thermal methods of producing graphenes do not fully remove the residual postproduction impurities such as catalyst metals.

Because the “Split Plasma” process does not damage material in the way that acid treatments do, Haydale’s graphenes can be tailored to specific customer requirements.