Graphene Leaders Canada (GLC) Inc. is pleased to announce their new coating development of graphene-enhanced GLC+ Electroless Nickel (EN) Coating for Metal Surfaces which demonstrates industry-changing results in wear-abrasion and corrosion resistance and improved hardness and lubricity properties.
In current technology, electroless nickel coatings provide excellent corrosion resistance and can be heat treated to improve hardness and wear resistance, although at the expense of the corrosion resistant behavior. These improvements to the performance are at the expense of the porosity of the coating, limiting applications in corrosive or chemically demanding environments which generates a significant gap.
The GLC+ Electroless Nickel (EN) Coating for Metal Surfaces is a solution to bridge the technological gap through oursuccessful incorporation of pristine graphene into electroless nickel coatings. In recent years, graphene has attracted great scientific attention due to its remarkable properties including highstrength elasticity, chemical inertness, lubricity, as well as high electrical and thermal conductivity. The successful co-deposition of graphene demonstrates a significant impact on the properties of the EN composite coating, showing marked improvements in a number of measured physical properties, such as hardness and wear-abrasion. Additionally, the dense lattice of graphene makes it impermeable to moisture and gas, making it an invaluable additive to aid in the inhibition of corrosion. This coating provides improved hardness and corrosion resistance, allowing for larger range of uses, or the application of a single coating for a wide variety of conditions.
Results of the coatings have demonstrated an improvement to hardness of greater than 60% and improvements to wear-abrasion-corrosion resistance of greater than 30%. These industry changing results are now being used as our starting point for greater optimization of the deposition conditions to begin next phase of our development of the coating focused towards commercialization. Our next phase targets are to further improve the hardness while rendering the coating chemically inert. GLC is in discussions with both national and international clients and industry partner’s in progressing this disruptive coating further towards commercialization.
GLC believes that additions of graphene to develop a GLC+ Protective Coating, along with further optimization will surpass the properties of hard chrome, the current gold standard in coatings. Improvements are expected in several areas of performance, including hardness and resistance to wear, coupled with the added benefit of enhanced corrosion resistance. These improvements will result in longer lifetimes under aggressive operating conditions (high temp, high salinity, high abrasion, High H2S) minimizing maintenance costs and lost production related to downtime.
