Advanced materials are at the core of Europe's industrial innovation and competitiveness across a range of applications and sectors: aeronautics, automotive and health industries, microelectronics, photonics, etc.  The estimated value and impact of advanced materials is highly significant, with an expected market size of the order of EUR 100 billion in 2015. Advanced materials are one of Europe’s Key Enabling Technologies (KET) and are supported in the Union's Horizon 2020 Research Framework Programme (2014-2020).

Graphene is the first of a new class of advanced materials in the form of carbon sheets one atom thick.  Yet it was only 10 years ago that groundbreaking experiments done in Europe unveiled its true potential and resulted in the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. We now know that graphene has a whole range of outstanding physical, mechanical, electrical and optical properties. The long-term forecast worldwide for the potential market of new products incorporating graphene is hundreds of billions of euros. Examples of such markets include: improved energy storage in batteries for electric vehicles; new composites for aerospace, automobile and energy industries; sensors and new imaging devices for industrial, environmental and medical applications and for (opto)electronics and photonics industries.

Thanks to the EU Flagship research initiative "Graphene", Europe is in the driving seat for exploiting graphene's outstanding properties and turning them into economic growth and jobs. "Graphene" is a 10-year, 1-billion Euros research initiative launched in October 2013 and involving hundreds of excellent researchers from academia and industry who are working together to implement a common research roadmap and transfer outstanding science from the laboratory to the factory.

The STOA workshop will serve as a platform for discussing the potential Europe has in graphene-related science and technology developments, as well as in the industrial development and economic exploitation of new graphene-based products.

The workshop includes presentations from high-level scientists, including Nobel Laureates, who will explain how and why graphene promises to be so revolutionary a material (already recognised by the award of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics) and describe the important role of the "Graphene" Flagship. It also includes Industry speakers from a range of sectors who will present the innovation potential of graphene in their market sectors and their plans to exploit it in new or improved products and processes.

AGENDA