Patent Landscape Report on Graphene by PatSeer Pro

PATENT LANDSCAPE REPORT
BY PATSEER PRO
GRAPHENE
(/ˈɡræf.iːn/)

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© 2017 Gridlogics. All Rights Reserved.
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GRAPHENE - OVERVIEW
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon, whose structure is one-atom-thick planar sheets of sp2-bonded
carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. The term graphene was
coined as a combination of graphite and the suffix -ene by Hanns-Peter Boehm, who described
single-layer carbon foils in 1962. Graphene is most easily visualized as an atomic-scale chicken wire
made of carbon atoms and their bonds. The crystalline or "flake" form of graphite consists of many
graphene sheets stacked together.
The carbon-carbon bond length in graphene is about 0.142 nanometers. Graphene sheets stack to
form graphite with an interplanar spacing of 0.335 nm, which means that a stack of 3 million sheets
would be only one millimetre thick. Graphene is the basic structural element of some carbon
allotropes including graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. It can also be considered
as an indefinitely large aromatic molecule, the limiting case of the family of flat polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons.
Because of its range of extraordinary properties, people are considering using graphene in a myriad
of different applications. For example, because graphene is so strong, people want to use it to
reinforce plastics, making them conductive at the same time. Because it's transparent and conducts
electricity, people want to use it in applications like mobile phone screens, touch screens, TV
screens and so on. People are also considering using it to go beyond silicon technology and make
our integrated circuits even denser and speedier. Those are just few examples.
It is lighter than a feather, stronger than steel, yet incredibly flexible and more conductive than
copper. It has been hailed as “the miracle material”, it’s possible uses are apparently almost endless.
This report is an update of Technology Insight Report on Graphene prepared in 2013 and is prepared
following a noticeable increase in research activities around Graphene.

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Overview
The below table summarizes graphene analysis. We used PatSeer to search individual publications
and then collapsed them to one member per Family (Simple Families). Patent families are a group of
one or more patent applications in multiple countries which represent the same invention.
Table 1: Summary of worldwide patent dataset for graphene
Number of patent publications 49912
Number of patent families 30963
Earliest Priority year range 2004 TO 2017
Top Applicant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
NOTE:
 All analysis in this report has been done on Simple Family (one member per family)
unless specifically mentioned and so the data in the charts should be construed
accordingly
 Records for Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display have not been grouped together in
Samsung Group as there are some patents owned by both these companies individually
 Total number of records considered for analysis were 30000 as some of the irrelevant
records were removed from the data set after manual review

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TECHNICAL SEGMENTATION (PATENT
CATEGORIZATION)
PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES APPLICATIONS FORMS OF
GRAPHENE
Adhesive Tape Atomic Force Microscopy 3D
Carbon Dioxide Reduction Automobiles Bilayer
Centrifugation Aviation Chemical
Modification
Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) Bioimaging Graphite Oxide
Cold wall Bone Tissue Engineering Gyroid
Electrochemical Synthesis Calayst Ligand
Epitaxial Growth Composite Materials
 Anti-Corrosion
 Spray Coating
 Weatherproof
Materials
Monolayer sheets
Exfoliation Conductive Ink
Graphite Oxide Reduction Coolant Nanocoil
Immiscible Liquids Defence Nanoribbons
Intercalation Electromagnetic Shielding Pillared
Ion Implantation Electronic Body Parts Platelets
Laser Electronics
 Capacitors
 Frequency Multiplier
 HEMT
 Integrated Circuits
 Interconnects
 MOSFET
 Spintronics
 Transistors
 Transparent
Conducting
Electrodes
 Ultracapacitors
Quantum Dots
Metal Substrates
 Copper
 Iridium
 Nickel
 Ruthenium
 Silicon carbide
 Silicon/germanium/hydrogen
Electrophoretic Deposition Superlattice
Microwave-assisted Oxidation Energy Storage
 Fuel Cells
 Lithium Ion Batteries
 Solar Cells
 Thin Film Batteries
Molten Salts Environmental
 Contaminant
Removal
 Oil-spill
 Water Filtration
Nanotube Slicing Light Processing

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 Infrared Light
Detection
 Optical Modulator
 Photodetector
Pyrolysis Lubricants
Roll-to-roll Medical
 Antibiotics
 Anticancer
treatment
 Biomicrorobotics
 Cholesterol
Monitoring
 Contrast Agents
 DNA Sequencing
 Glucose Level
 Neurological
Disorders
 Polymerase Chain
Reaction Tissue
Engineering
Shearing Nanoantennas
Sonication Nanoimprint Lithography
Spin Coating Optical Electronics
 Light Emitting
Diodes
 Liquid Crystal
Displays
Optoisolators
 Panel Displays
 Photodiodes
 Photomultipliers
 Photonic integrated
circuit
 Photoresistor
 Phototransistors
 Touchscreens
Supersonic Spray Optical Lens
Paints
Plasmonics
Printers
Radio Wave Absorption
Redox
Sensors
 Bio Sensors
 Biological Sensors
 Chemical Sensors
 Gas Sensors
 Hall Effect
 Magnetic Sensors
 Mass Sensors
 Molecular Sensors
 Motion Sensors
 Nanopore Sensors

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 NEMS
 Piezoelectric Effect
 Pressure Sensors
 Radiation Sensors
Sports
Textile
Thermal Management
Thermoplastics
Transducers

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FILING TREND
The chart shows filing trends in Graphene during the last 15 years. Maximum number of patent
applications (6974) taking/having priority were filed during 2015.
A sudden rise in patent filing activity in the domain of graphene during years 2013-15 indicates
widespread interest in the given technology domain.
It’s clear the current activity around these technologies is likely to continue seeing more
innovation in the near future.
How we did it?
Once the patents were added to PatSeer Project, application trend chart was generated within Quick Stats.
The generated chart was then converted to Earliest Priority Year.

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TOP COMPANIES
The chart below represents top companies active in graphene technology.
If we compare the top 5 applicants in 2013 (Table 2), with the current top patent holders, it can
be seen that there are many universities like Univ Zhejiang and Univ Tsinghua appear in the top
5
Table 2: Top 5 applicants in 2013
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD 150
KOREA ADVANCED INST SCI & TECH 68
SUNGKYUNKWAN UNIV 56
IBM CORP 44
OCEANS KING LIGHTING SCIENCE 32
How we did it?
Once the patents were added to PatSeer Projects, top assignees chart was generated within the Quick
Stats Tab.
Note:
Assignees used for all the charts below were generated with the help of custom fields, i.e. similar
assignees with name variations were filtered, and then these were assigned to a particular custom field
(assignee).This was repeated for the top assignees

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RESEARCH ACTIVITY AROUND THE WORLD
The map below represents the geographical filing relating to Graphene. The map helps provide
an indication of where innovation in this area is originating. It can be seen that 51% of total
graphene landscape originate from China followed by Korea (6024) and US (4328). The strength
of the coloring represents the proportion of patent applications.
Country Total
CN 15375
KR 6024
US 4328
JP 1471
TW 681
How we did it?
The map was generated using the Priority country tab under the Quick Stats option.

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FILING TREND BY GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS
The chart represents filing trends for top 5 patent authorities for last 15 years. It can be seen
since 2010 there has been considerable growth in the filings in China (15666 records). US filings
have dropped significantly in the last five years.
How we did it?
Once the patents were added to PatSeer Project, application trend chart was generated within Quick Stats.
The generated chart was then converted to Earliest Priority Year. Further, using Chart Layer values for top
5 priority countries were plotted and then stacked to make the chart appear as stacked area chart.

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COMPANY ACTIVITY ACROSS PRODUCTION
TECHNIQUES
 The table below shows research activity of top 10 companies across different
production techniques
 Samsung has the most number of records for Metal Substrates
 Univ Southeast focuses more on Spin Coating
The chart below shows assignee activity across different metal substrates. Copper is most
commonly used metal substrate.

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How we did it?
First records were classified under different production techniques. These were then compared using the
co-occurrence tool with the companies. The resulted matrix was converted to row heat map and
downloaded as PNG. Further different metal substrates were analyzed with respect to companies and the
resulting matrix was converted to a column chart and downloaded as PNG.

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COMPANY ACTIVITY ACROSS APPLICATIONS
The table below shows research activity of companies across various all the applications.
Assignees
KAIST
LGChem
OceansKing
LightingScience
Samsung
UnivJiangsu
UnivSoutheast
Univ
SungkyunkwanR
UnivTianjin
UnivTsinghua
UnivZhejiang
Applications(Total) 202 164 338 413 188 154 215 239 248 294
Atomic Force
Microscopy
33 5 5 19 8 3 32 5 22 5
Automobiles 1 3
Aviation 6 9 12 10 6 7 24 6 9
Bioimaging 2 3 5
Bone tissue
engineering
1 1 1 1 1 1
Catalyst 7 2 7 1 1 5 3 4 2
Composite
Materials
17 27 24 68 30 25 40 31 24 40
Conductive Ink 2 10 10 3 3 1
Coolant 2 2 1
Defence 4 5 4 3 2 7 5 7 4
Electromagnetic
Shielding
1 20 2 2 2 5 9 5 14
Electronic Body
Parts
5 1 1
Electronics 58 15 61 224 20 19 77 32 48 49
Electrophoretic
Deposition
1 1 3 2 1
Energy Storage 55 91 178 126 58 36 85 79 90 117
Environmental 6 5 32 11 21 19 13 25 32 22
Light Processing 3 1 30 5 2 14 3 4 12
Lubricants 4 16 9 6 2 1 1 5 18
Medical 20 4 15 36 17 20 17 15 24
Nanoantennas 1 1
Nanoimprint
Lithography
6 1 2 8
Optical Electronics 39 13 52 103 4 8 47 4 24 21
Optical Lens 2 1 2
Paints 3 2 6 2 5 4 3 8 2 10
Plasmonics 11 2 15 5 9 3 2 2
Printers 12 14 35 6 1 21 3 3 6
Radio Wave
Absorption
1
Redox 7 4 22 20 19 27 15 26 24 24
Sensors 38 11 1 67 39 37 60 23 27 34

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Sports 3 1
Textile 16 81 5 53 11 11 10 29 24 36
Thermal
Management
15 26 4 48 11 10 12 20 13 16
Thermoplastics 11 25 25 2 6 2 3 5
Transducers 2 2 1 1 5 1 3 3
How we did it?
First records were classified under different application areas. These were then compared using the co-
occurrence tool with the companies. The resulted matrix was exported as a CSV.

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COMPANY ACTIVITY ACROSS GRAPHENE FORMS
 The chart below represents research activity of key companies across different forms of
graphene
 Oceans King Lighting mainly focuses on Graphite Oxide as compared to others
How we did it?
First records were classified under different forms of graphene. These were then compared using the co-
occurrence tool with the companies. The resulting matrix was converted to a tree map using the option
present and then downloaded as PNG.
.

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COMPANY ACTIVITY ACROSS ELECTRONIC
APPLICATIONS
 The matrix below shows research activity of companies across different electronic
applications of graphene
 Nanotek Instruments has most number of records for Interconnects
How we did it?
First records were classified under different sub-categories for electronics as an application for graphene.
These were then compared using the co-occurrence tool with the companies. The resulted matrix was
converted to column heat map and downloaded as PNG.

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Optical Electronics vs Metal Substrates
 The chart below shows metal substrates used in optical electronics
 Copper is widely used as a metal substrate across all the electronic applications
How we did it?
First records were classified under different components of optical electronics and metal substrates and
then a co- occurrence matrix for the same was generated using the co-occurrence tool. The resulting
matrix was converted to a column chart and downloaded as PNG.

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Graphene Forms vs Application Areas
The table below shows which form of graphene is used in which application area
Formsof
Graphene
3D
Bilayer
Chemical
Modification
Graphite
Oxide
Gyroid
Ligand
Monolayer
Sheets
Nanocoil
Nanoribbons
Pillared
Platelets
Quantum
Dots
Superlattice
Applications (Total) 457 585 228 8185 8 204 104 22 371 12 286 773 39
Atomic Force Microscopy 25 59 34 710 6 28 28 1 63 2 40 112 7
Automobiles 1 12 1
Aviation 80 47 19 588 12 3 3 30 2 50 36 1
Bioimaging 3 1 30 8 2 1 29
Bone tissue engineering 7 2 35 7
Catalyst 22 9 6 152 1 19 2 5 1 6 8
Composite Materials 83 117 36 1553 3 34 22 7 57 5 97 117 3
Conductive Ink 22 18 9 96 2 1 2 18 4
Coolant 9 5 2 23 1 1 7 2
Defence 18 24 3 127 1 4 2 15 2 13 18 1
Electromagnetic
Shielding
30 23 10 284 1 1 1 7 48 9
Electronic Body Parts 2 5 16 1 1 1
Electronics 163 226 46 1380 5 51 51 9 209 7 137 211 21
Electrophoretic
Deposition
4 13 2 65 1 1 2 3 12
Energy Storage 158 151 57 2776 7 69 41 9 116 7 76 267 12
Environmental 40 45 30 967 2 17 8 2 25 1 20 76 1
Light Processing 18 34 5 139 15 13 26 5 79 7
Lubricants 23 15 7 221 4 5 4 10 29 22
Medical 61 45 28 957 62 9 27 1 18 167
Nanoantennas 7 5 3 2 2 5
Nanoimprint Lithography 8 10 4 43 5 5 2 10 31 4
Optical Electronics 83 117 21 750 31 18 50 30 165 5
Optical Lens 4 1 23 2 1 1 8
Paints 29 30 23 469 1 12 1 2 10 33 33
Plasmonics 16 39 4 214 5 17 7 33 1 10 45 4
Printers 150 66 17 429 4 26 6 1 41 38 107 3
Radio Wave Absorption 3
Redox 54 31 26 1160 1 38 8 1 23 1 28 65
Sensors 86 105 45 1244 1 77 22 3 74 3 30 224 11
Sports 5 6 2 37 3 4 1 1
Textile 84 81 31 969 19 8 5 34 1 92 81
Thermal Management 95 81 29 1015 4 13 7 4 32 86 66 6
Thermoplastics 64 37 20 356 1 14 3 5 21 2 76 28
Transducers 14 10 6 118 4 2 1 9 7 17

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How we did it?
The categories for different graphene forms and application areas created for previous analysis were
correlated using the co-occurrence tool. The resulted matrix was exported as a CSV.

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CORRELATION MAP FOR KEY COMPANIES ACROSS
DIFFERENT CPC
The map below represents correlation between top 5 companies and their top 5 CPC.
In the map, each company is connected to particular Cooperative Patent Class (CPC) through
links whose thickness and color intensity is directly proportional to the number of records
relating them. The number next to each line represents the number of records for various
companies present in a particular technology area.
It can be seen that Oceans King, Univ Zhejiang and Univ Tsinghua, all Chinese companies have
research interest in graphene’s application in renewable or green energy (Y02) where as
Samsung focuses mainly on semiconductors and nanotechnology materials.
How we did it?
The co-relation mode within VizMAP was used to correlate top 5 companies with top 5 CPC. The resulting
map was downloaded as an image.

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Class Definitions
B05D1 Processes for applying liquids or other fluent materials
B82Y30 Nano-technology for materials or surface science
B82Y40 Manufacture or treatment of nano-structures
C01B31 Carbon;Compounds
C23C16 Chemical coating by decomposition of gaseous compounds, without leaving reaction products of surface
material in the coating, i.e. chemical vapour deposition [CVD] processes
H01G11 Nano-technology for materials or surface science, e.g. nano-composites
H01L21 Processes or apparatus adapted for the manufacture or treatment of semiconductor or solid state devices
or of parts thereof
H01L29 Semiconductor devices adapted for rectifying, amplifying, oscillating or switching, or capacitors or resistors
with at least one potential-jump barrier or surface barrier
H01L41 Piezo-electric devices in general
H01M10 Secondary cells
H01M4 Electrodes
Y02E60 Enabling technologies or technologies with a potential or indirect contribution to GHG emissions mitigation
Y02P70 Climate change mitigation technologies in the production process for final industrial or consumer products

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INVENTOR GROUPS OF KEY COMPANIES IN
GRAPHENE
The generated map below highlights key inventor groups of Hon Hai Precision and Univ
Tsinghua. In map below the groups are created using network relationships and the records are
positioned on the map based on their relationship to Assignee and inventors listed on the graph.
Also groups of inventors who file together will appear clustered together. As can be seen
inventor groups of Jiang Kaili, Fan Shoushan and Wang Jiaping appear together as they have
common records between them. Patent nodes for Univ Tsinghua and Hon Hai are represented in
red and green respectively.
How we did it?
Using the VizMAP tool, patents of Univ Tsinghua and Hon Hai Precision were loaded from Current
Assignee field within ‘Analyze By’ option in the network mode. These were then expanded by their
respective inventor names. We then restricted the map to those inventors having 2 or more records. Links
option was enabled to link the records between different inventors and assignees. Color by Current
Assignees option was used to differentiate records for different assignees.

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KEY COMPANY ANALYSIS
We identified following companies primarily focusing on graphene and its application areas
 Nanotek Instruments Inc
 Vorbeck Materials
 Graftech Inc
 Graphenea Inc
 NanoXplore

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FILING TREND
The following chart shows number of filings by key companies from 2004. It can be seen that all
these companies have filed in 2014 which indicates there was a lot of R&D activity around that
time.
How we did it?
First key companies in graphene were identified by online research. Then, application trend chart was
generated within Quick Stats which was then converted to Earliest Priority Year. Using Chart Layer option,
layers for those key companies were added on the generated earliest priority year chart and the resulting
chart was exported as PNG.

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GRAPHENE – CHINA TRENDS
TOP COMPANIES
The chart shows records for top 15 patent holders from China
How we did it?
We selected China as priority country from the filter option present within results page. Current assignee
chart for top 15 companies was generated within the Quick Stats Tab.

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GRAPHENE – KOREA TRENDS
TOP COMPANIES
The chart shows records for top 15 patent holders from Korea
How we did it?
We selected Korea as priority country from the filter option present within results page. Current assignee

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GRAPHENE – US TRENDS
TOP COMPANIES
The chart shows records for top 15 patent holders from US
How we did it?
We selected US as priority country from the filter option present within results page. Current assignee

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INDUSTRIAL SEGMENTATION FOR CHINA, US AND
KOREA
 The bar chart below represents comparative analysis for the top three countries based
on priority
 It can be seen even if US is at the third position in terms of records filed, it has more
number of filings in Instruments & Mechanical Engineering domain as compared to
Korea
How we did it?
We selected CN, KR and US as priority countries from the filter option present within results page. Bar
chart for Priority Countries was generated within the Quick Stats Tab. Using Add Layer, we selected
different Tech Domains and the resulting chart was converted to Stacked Bar Chart using the option
present. It was then downloaded as PNG.

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SUMMARY
This report categorizes and graphically analyzes graphene technologies. It is clear from the
patenting trends in graphene-related patents and company portfolio and activity, that this is a
rapidly emerging research-based area of technology. Looking at the trends in the classification
of patents, this technology is now finding application in a diverse range of technological areas.
Graphene-related technologies are classified in a diverse range of places in the IPC and though
the majority of sub-groups relate to the chemistry and processing of graphene, there are a
significant and diverse range of application-specific classifications applied. Varying research
strategies of the applicants are evident from the patent collaborations; Samsung exhibits a
reasonable amount of collaboration, whilst other top applicants show none. The different
nature of the top applicants is further highlighted by the technology landscape which reveals
that, in contrast to the specialism evident from most applicants, Samsung is active in a very
diverse range of graphene-related technology.
China has emerged as leader (in the last five years) in terms of manufacturing as well as
applications of graphene.

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Patent Landscape Report on Graphene by PatSeer Pro

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