Graphite growth is being pulled along by the widespread adopion of more sophisticated electronic devices, says CEO Gary Economo with Focus Graphite (PINK:FCSMF) who spoke to MINING.com at the PDAC in March.
“Traditionally graphite has been used in many industrial applications,” says Economo.
“But in the recent years lithium batteries have really started to become very popular in many, many different applications.”
Lithium tends to overshadow graphite.
“Graphite represents the annode material so there is 10 times more graphite than lithium in most batteries,” says Economo.
“All the annodes in lithium batteries are made out of graphite.”
Focus Graphite Inc. is a Canadian junior explorer running the Lac Knife crystalline flake graphite deposit located in the Côte Nord region of Quebec.
“Our typical customers would end up being battery companies for one,” says Economo.
“Companies involved in electronic thermal management applications. Alot of the high tech companies, for example, Apple that uses a variety of graphite based thermal management products to cool the smaller devices. As the iPhones and iPads become more powerful, they use graphite as the thermal spreading instead of fans.”
And what is the difference between graphite and graphene?
“A graphene is a singal atomic layer of graphite. It is the strongest material known to man. It is electrically conductive, more so than copper. So many new applications are being developed using this graphene material.”