Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many graphene-related patent applications were filed in the UK between 2011 and 2014; and what information his Department holds on the number of such applications filed worldwide in that period.

The UK Government currently invests well over £100 million in graphene research, training and innovation. This includes £50m Government capital investment to build national capability to support the commercialisation of applications for graphene (pledged by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, in October 2011), £34m for graphene innovation capability and over £24m in EPSRC research and training grants across UK universities.

The National Graphene Institute (NGI) at the University of Manchester is a key element of the UK’s global research and technology graphene hub to build national capability to support the commercialisation of applications for graphene. The NGI is a resource for research groups and businesses across the UK to facilitate collaborative work where appropriate. It has received funding of £38 million of the £50m capital funds from the UK Government via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), alongside £23 million of funds from the European Regional Development Fund to help accelerate the commercialisation of graphene. The NGI was officially opened by the Chancellor, the Rt Hon George Osborne, on 20 March 2015.

More than 35 companies from across the world have already chosen to partner with The University of Manchester working on graphene-related projects. University of Manchester researchers have also secured £9.5 million from EPSRC for ‘Graphene Engineering’ research projects and a Centre for Doctoral Training focussed on developing world-leading expertise in the science and technology of graphene.

In 2014, Innovate UK and EPSRC invested £2.5m in feasibility studies to accelerate commercial applications of graphene. The competition invested in projects that explored the potential of graphene to yield new products that could disrupt markets.

To build UK capacity in this area, £34m has been invested into graphene innovation capability. In 2014, £20m funding was announced (including £15m from HEFCE UK Research Partnership Investment Fund and £5m from Innovate UK) towards a £60m investment in Manchester called the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC), which is co-funded by the Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy company Masdar. UK Trade and Investment worked alongside Manchester City Council and the University of Manchester to secure this investment. Set to open in Manchester in 2017, the GEIC will complement the NGI and initiate further industry-led development in graphene applications with academic collaboration. The GEIC will contain substantial pilot production facilities and will be a leading test-bed for graphene process engineering and scale-up. It will link with international programmes for research project support, such as the €1 billion European Union Graphene Flagship.

Also in 2014, the Chancellor announced a £14 million investment for a “Graphene Applications Innovation Centre” to be based at the Centre for Process Innovation in the north-east of England (part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult).

Subject to the availability of funding following the Spending Review, Innovate UK intends to further support business-led innovation in graphene by running competitions to accelerate the commercial applications of graphene. An efficient, longer-lasting ‘graphene lightbulb’, developed by a University of Manchester spin-out company, is believed to be the first commercial application of graphene to emerge from the UK.

In 2014, Innovate UK set up a Graphene Special Interest Group (SIG) to provide leadership and a focal point for the exploitation of graphene by UK industry and to help connect and align the developing UK graphene value chain. A scoping document produced for the Graphene SIG examined time to market for key graphene-enabled technologies, it can be found at:

https://connect.innovateuk.org/documents/10660253/14368155/Graphene%20Think%20Piece_Oct2013

The table below shows the number of published patent applications in the UK (filed by applicants based anywhere in the world) and the total number worldwide.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) does not hold worldwide patent data so this has been extracted from an external database, as used in the IPO’s 2015 graphene patent landscape report available from

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/419651/Graphene_-_the_worldwide_patent_landscape_in_2015_-_accessible.pdf