The Future of materials is here.

Dickinson Corporation is a materials research laboratory in the San Francisco Bay Area that is building the world's strongest, lightest structures by scaling the extraordinary properties of atomically thin 2D materials up to the macroscale. As a private research organization engaged in deep technology development for over a decade, Dickinson has filled an institutional gap by intentionally pursuing long-term, high-risk, non-incremental, impact-oriented objectives. The groundbreaking nature of our innovations and the depth and breadth of our intellectual property portfolio reflect our lab's success in activities spanning basic research, application development, reactor construction, and pilot production.

Dickinson has developed a patented technology for directing the polymerization of 2D “monomers” in 3D space, resulting in a new category of large-scale, 2D-structured 3D networks known as "polymeric graphenes." Dickinson's technique involves concurrently growing and assembling 2D free radical condensates over an easily-recycled, porous template, the surface of which directs the evolution of the network and embeds it in a microscopically or macroscopically 3D space. During growth, the condensates’ edges come into contact and fluidly self-rearrange into energy-minimizing, grafted configurations. Analogous to 0D monomers homopolymerizing to form 1D polymer chains, the 2D condensates homopolymerize and coalesce to form a seamless graphene surface having an architected geometry and topology. Just as traditional polymers can be engineered with diverse mechanics using structure-property principles, Dickinson architects polymeric graphenes to obtain diverse, application-targeted properties (e.g. size, density, strength, flexibility, etc.).

The last forty years of carbon nanotechnology can be viewed as a stalled evolution toward the construction of larger-scale, higher-dimensional structures from graphenic lattices. After the discovery of 0D fullerenes in 1985, researchers introduced 1D nanotubes in 1994 and 2D nanosheets in 2004, but for the last two decades the field has struggled with the final step from 2D to 3D. This step is the most critical if graphene’s properties— currently confined to the negligible volumes of low-dimensional particle types—are to be extended to larger, more practically useful volumes. Attempts to construct 3D networks from commercially available particle types like nanotubes and nanosheets have produced disjoint assemblies with inadequate density, structural periodicity, and lattice continuity. 

Inspired by natural crosslinked carbons such as soot and anthracite and echoing early theorized graphene foams, Dickinson Corporation's “polymeric graphenes” are a new category of continuous, 3D graphenic networks that embody the final stage of graphene’s progression from 0D to architected 3D structures. These networks are orders of magnitude larger and more complex than their nanoscale predecessors. Together, they constitute a broad taxonomy within which the simple, low-dimensional geometries of fullerenes, nanotubes, and nanosheets represent zero-volume limit cases. From a structure-property standpoint, polymeric graphenes eliminate the intrinsic challenges associated with graphenic nanoparticles (e.g., limited dispersibility, viscosity effects, toxicity concerns, etc.) and invite a critical reassessment of those particles’ roles in future applications. As suggested by their name, they can be viewed as a new paradigm of polymers in which the base structure is a curved surface instead of the 1D chains comprising traditional polymers.

A common value proposition for polymeric graphenes in the coming years will be their unprecedented combination of extraordinary low-density mechanics and volumetric cost leadership. As an example, polymer graphene microparticles having a density of 0.05 g/cm3 to 0.10 g/cm3 will be able to match or surpass the mechanics (strength, stiffness, elongation at break) of many legacy polymers (typically having a density of ~1.0 g/cm3) while simultaneously costing customers less in volume terms. This means that customers will be able to fill their polymer products with these low-density polymeric graphene additives to reduce product mass and cost. 

If industry is framed in mass terms—i.e., as mass in, mass out, and mass in transit—then a new category of ultralight polymers offering non-incremental lightweighting effects and outcompeting even commodity polymers on cost can be used to transform the built environment and to shrink the overall footprint of industry without sacrificing jobs, profits, or units produced. If this occurs, then polymeric graphenes will be the most transformative category of new materials since the synthetic polymers of the 20th century—which they will ultimately, at lest in part, replace.