GRAPHENE, the wonder material of the 21st century, is generating a lot of excitement in the scientific community and industry circles. This niche material gives an extremely versatile advantage to almost every industry ranging from manufacturing aircraft to making medical sensors, from the filtration membranes for air and water to providing strong antimicrobial properties for textiles. It also gives superlative energy storage upgrades to batteries, supercapacitors, and hybrids.
One well-known property of graphene is that it is one of the strongest nanomaterials present in material science. It is only one atom thick, that is, a thousand times thinner than human hair, and has strong antimicrobial activity. Also, it has high electron mobility and thermal conductivity at room temperature along with high flexibility.
Jaipur-based nanotechnology company Nanomatrix Materials (NM) is working on the large-scale manufacturing of this niche material and its derivatives and finding unique applications for them in the field of filtration, energy, construction, coatings and much more.
“Nanomatrix Materials is one of the first companies in the country that specialises in the integration of graphene into a number of applications and creates a value-added proposition,” says its founder Vikas Bardiya. He, along with Arvind Bhardwaj and Anupam Kumar (two experienced nanotechnology researchers, also co-founders of Nanomatrix Materials) make a strong team who visualise, conceptualise and synthesise nanomaterials in material science. The company partners with many industry players in the domains such as filtration, polymers, construction, energy, and textiles to solve their unique challenges through the amazing properties of graphene nanotechnology.
Nanomatrix Materials is the R&D and B2B arm of the Bardiya Group which specialises in manufacturing graphene and integrating it for further value-added applications. “Our expertise lies in digging deeper into the subject. It took years of knowledge and research which includes expertise from the US and EU to finally come up with a solution for sustainable and scaling up graphene manufacturing,” says Bardiya.
The beauty of graphene is that it can be functionalised in a number of ways, says Bardiya. For example, graphene can be modified to be a good or bad insulator. “There are a number of use cases that are being worked upon across the globe and some companies have even come up with various end-use products for the costumers. For example, graphene-based batteries, coatings, etc. Not only this, graphene is used as an additive in many industries such as consumer electronics, sensors, water filtration, textile, rubber and tyres, polymers, oil and many more.”
Nanomatrix Materials has developed a number of advanced nanomaterials solutions across sectors which include textile, marine, electronics, mechanical, etc. “One such application that we came up with is NMG-Tx, a patented graphene-silver technology which is strongly anti-viral and anti-bacterial. The membrane developed by using nanocomposite is very effective in face masks including non-surgical face masks and N95 face masks and air filters,” says Bardiya, adding, “In the prevailing pandemic one of the major concerns is the safety of health workers thus, providing them high quality of protective equipment is the need of the hour.”
Bardiya says, “Our G1 Wonder Masks are currently the No. 1 bestseller in fashion category on Amazon. We have invested Rs 5 crore in this project. We have also started exporting to different countries including USA, UAE and Thailand.”
G1 Wonders is the consumer products wing (B2C) of the Bardiya Group which shall soon have its presence in online as well as the brick-and-mortar retail space, says Bardiya. “We have been receiving orders for our masks across the country, especially from metros. We are expanding our network and currently we are present in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kerala, Kolkata and a few tier 2 cities,” he adds.
In the next 12-18 months, the company plans to develop products in the field of air and water filtration, marine disaster management, energy, petroleum, textiles, polymer, construction and environmental clean-ups.
