The round has been led by Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, with the participation of Parkwalk Advisors, Amadeus Capital Partners, IQ Capital Partners and a number of angel investors.
Paragraf is focused on the production of ‘two-dimensional’ materials, primarily graphene, and the development of electronic devices based on these materials. Harnessing the extremely high conductivity, strength, low weight and flexibility of graphene, the company's technology is the first ever commercial-scale method validated to reproducibly deliver functionally active graphene with properties targeted to its final device-specific application, with both high quality and high throughput.
Using a proprietary, patent protected approach Paragraf has been able to address the problems of poor uniformity, reproducibility, limited size and material contamination that have held back current graphene manufacturing techniques.
The company has already produced layers with electrical characteristics optimised for producing very sensitive detectors at commercial scale and improved efficiency contact layers for common technologies such as LEDs.
Paragraf’s devices will target markets including transistors, where graphene-based devices could deliver clock speeds several orders of magnitude faster than silicon-based devices; chemical and electrical sensors, where graphene could increase sensitivity by a factor of >1000; and novel energy generation devices tapping into kinetic and chemical green energy sources yet to be exploited by any other technology.
Commenting Prof. Sir Colin Humphreys, Chairman and Co-Founder of Paragraf, said: “Graphene has been called the new wonder material, because of its potential to transform a range of industries such as electronics, energy and healthcare. However, so far, its applications have been limited because good quality graphene is only available in small flakes. Our underlying research has the capability to transform production by providing good quality, large-area graphene on a commercial scale.”