 Today I have the distinct pleasure of speaking with one of the world's top experts on graphene, Dr. Ian Flint. How are you today? I'm very good. Thank you. So happy to have you here. I have so many questions. But let's just hit the ground running with what is the number one most exciting application of graphene presently in the market? I would say probably water filters. That includes desalination or oil-water separation for contaminated sites, removing heavy metals from water. That's what I think is the most exciting one. And for those of you out there that don't know what graphene is, let's do a quick overview. Graphene is a single sheet of graphite. It's a series of hexagonal carbon bonds that basically goes on a atomic level, what seems like forever. But for us it's only a few microns long. This is not only one of the top sizzling online search topics in the world. It's also a topic where there's more misinformation than just about any other topic I know. So let's just start at the top if you don't mind. Number one, is it true that graphene coatings on fighter jets will make them impossible to detect through a radar? The short answer is yes. The long answer is no. What you have to do is you have to tune the spaces between the graphite and put different, basically metal ions in between them in order to make it absorb certain things. It can be done and it can be done so that it's active, which means you can turn that, basically that stealth on and off. But it's a long way away. Okay, so our military does not currently have utilization of graphene coatings for their fighter jets. No, they don't. Okay, myth number one. The next one I have for you, space elevators. That seems really cool to us. Our numbers went through the roof with a graphene expert telling us about space elevators. Can you tell us quickly what they're talking about? Well, what they're talking about is graphene as an infinitely long molecule that where one molecule goes from the ground up into space. And if you can do that, yes, you can have your space elevator. But at the moment, a graphene crystal is, let's go to that size. A few microns in size and that there's nothing near going to space. So what you'd have to do is you'd have to stack all those crystals together and somehow bond them together. We do not have the technology for that. Okay. Is it possible? We could in the future. I would assume it is. Okay. Very exciting. The next one I'd like to know personally is we had companies coming to us claiming that graphene was the strongest material in the world. Is it the strongest material in the world? Yes. It is. But only under tension when you pull it. When you push it, it just goes right into a little ball. And they were explained to us that they could take the iron bars that you use for building large buildings and use graphene it to make an even stronger steel bar for, say, the Chinese infrastructure. Does that sound? Yes. The same answer is the space elevator. Okay. You have to bond them all together to make one molecule out of the whole thing and we are not at that point yet. There's other ways you can get close to that which is to put the graphene into other things. Whether that's ceramics or metals or plastics, then you are using some of that strength of that graphene to augment the strength of the material you're putting it in. And you can get it significantly stronger than those current materials. But it's nothing near what pure graphene would do. But I won't even call it graphene because it's essentially a carbon crystal. If you had that carbon crystal, it's about 600 times the strength of steel. Okay. So, let's go to membranes, though, because they are real and they could potentially be on the market in three months. Three months. And what would these membranes do? I think you were talking about water filtration. Yes. That's what I'm involved with right now. The company is Zero Energy Waters, one of my projects. And what we're doing is we are basically coating other substrates and then using that to... I was a direct replacement for the membranes that are used in desalination plants. And the way to think about it is that the graphene is only a few molecules thick, which means that the pressure required to push the water through that is very small, whereas currently there's a lot of pressure required. So what is happening is that membrane, essentially you eliminate that pressure that is needed so that you're saving maybe half of the energy that you would for desalination. So we'll call that half the cost. And at half the cost, it makes desalination from an ocean economic, even for an agricultural purpose. Okay. So Dr. Flint, I need you to dump this down more for me. Okay. I'm probably some of my friends in the industry as well. So we're using this membrane, then, will be more cost-effective and more thorough for water? It's not any more thorough. The membranes that are out there right now do an excellent job. They just use a lot of energy. Okay. So the cost-effective benefit of this is it uses less energy. Correct. Yes. And the price? It's a little more expensive than the current membranes, probably 50% more. Okay. So what about as well the difference between organic graphene and the non-organic graphene, the scientifically created graphene, artificial graphene? We were talking about chemical vapor deposition versus natural graphene, graphene as the source. Okay. One is the reaction of methane or carbon monoxide that results in the growth of the graphene, usually onto a layer of copper. It's very expensive, but you get a very consistent single layer over an extensive period, or not periods, very extensive area. And that is the stuff that is used in the electronics industry. In other words, if you want to make some sort of a transistor or an integrated chip with graphene, that's what you're doing because it's a single layer. The natural stuff, you're making little platelets out of the material so that it's not continuous over that entire layer, which means that you can't really use it for the same purpose in electronics. It still makes the surface conductive, but it's not as monolithic, which means you can't control it. So some graphite companies have come to us and said that their graphite is more competitive for better graphene? Maybe. It may be competitive to make the graphene, but it was unlikely to be competitive once you have made the graphene. There won't be a difference because graphene is down to such a small level that almost all the impurities are knocked out from making the process. You're far below the crystal size of almost all of the graphite that's used as the source anyways. So what you're looking at is the quality of the graphene is not measured by the graphene itself, but what graphite is still with it that has not been turned into a graphene, and that's not so much a function of the source graphite as it is the process that you're using to make it. Okay, so I'm an investor in the market, and I want to get involved in graphene, and I'm super excited about it. What would be your number, say your number, your first, second, and third pick, and what would be the most exciting applications that are real for graphene today? Well, as I said before, the first one is probably membranes. The second one is surface coatings, because the surface coatings can impart heat and electrical conductivities stuff, so that you could coat a piece of glass, for example, and make it into a DV screen, so that you can basically have your windows in your car to be video monitors or whatever, and it also means that you can make your cell phone, the screen in your cell phone, conductive, which currently is using different technology, but it's much faster and much more stable than they are currently. So the coatings is probably the second one, and to a degree they're related, because the membrane is a coating on something. The third one is what you mentioned with the tennis racket, which is the incorporation of graphene into a composite. In terms of the actual bulk of graphene used, the amount of graphene used into the composites is far greater than that on the surface. For example, probably a ton of graphene is enough to coat most of the glass in the world, because it's only a monolayer thick. Whereas a ton of graphene into plastics is 1%, it's only making you 100 tons of plastic. So in terms of volume for the graphene industry, that's where the money is. Well, you heard it here at Investor Intel. Please join us regularly at Dr. Plant. It's always a pleasure. Absolutely anytime.