Nokia Receives $1.35B Grant To Develop Graphene Tech 79
silverpig writes "It now appears that graphene has reached a point worthy of serious, direct industrial attention. The grant money itself comes from the European Union for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), but the work will be done by a large non-governmental company with eyes on developing useful real-world applications. Smartphones contain many components with high potential for making use of graphene. From the article: 'Nokia is leading the electronic firms within the Graphene Flagship Consortium, which includes 73 other companies and academic institutions from a number of mediums. The Finnish handset manufacturer has received a grant of $1.35 billion to research and develop graphene for practical applications, with the European Union for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) providing the grant itself.'"
Nokia could remain relevant. (Score:2, Interesting)
Carbon future (Score:5, Interesting)
"When we talk about graphene, we’ve reached a tipping point. We’re now looking at the beginning of a graphene revolution. Before this point in time, we figured out a way to manufacture cheap iron that led to the Industrial Revolution. Then there was silicon. Now, it’s time for graphene."
This is something that I've been looking forward to for various reasons: plenty of cheap carbon available, perhaps carbon circuitry will integrate better with biology, and I believe that electric conductivity between covalently joined atoms (as in graphene and nanotubes) is the way towards viable superconductors.
Re:This Could Be Promising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Only a small part goes to Nokia (Score:4, Interesting)
The FET flagship projects, of which this is one, have a budget of up to 100 million euro per year. The amount contributed by the EU will be considerably lower, as this number includes costs borne by the project members that are not reimbursed by the EU.
According to the rules governing these kinds of EU projects, Nokia will be able to request reimbursment for up to 50% of their R&D costs in the project. The actual levels of reimbursment may be lower, depending on how the budget is allocated. The EU is actually pretty aggressive about ensuring that money is actually spent in accordance with the contract that the project members are required to sign.
But way, there's more!
The press release from the project itself states that the initial 30 months have a budget of only 54 million euro and involve 126 different research groups. We don't know yet what the project will look like after that initial phase since new participants and activities will be added through an open (i.e. competitive call). Based on my experience, the project will almost certainly use the full 1 billion euro, eventually, but there's know way to know how those funds will be allocated, yet.
Nokia's share of the budget by the end of the project? My guess would be at the very most 50 million euro over ten years (of which they about half from the EU and have to put up the rest themselves), but that is just a guess.