Haydale successfully went public last week, raising £6.6 ($11 million). The market value was £23.6 million (almost $40 million) at the day of the float.

Haydale is developing and marketing carbon materials under the HDPlas brand. The company currently focuses on graphene, CNTs and zinc nanomaterials. The company also developed metal-free graphene-based inks. In October 2013 we posted an article explaining Haydale's business and technology. Haydale revealed that for the year ended in June 2013, the revenues were $153,000 while the operating loss was $1.8 million.

Haydale's IPO isn't a success so far - shares dropped from 210 pence per share to 122 (as of the time of writing) - that's almost a 50% drop. There are reports that Haydale is considering to sue its broker (Hume Capital Securities) after it "temporarily" dropped all of its market-making activities on IPO day. Later on Haydale said it has "no current intention" of pursuing any legal action against its broker

Haydale is the the third pure-graphene company to list in the UK. First up was Cientifica (which recently failed to raise more funds) and Applied Graphene Materials. Another AIM company, Graphene NanoChem is also involved with graphene.

Samsung announced that they developed a breakthrough large-area graphene synthesis process. The company says this is one of the most significant breakthroughs in graphene research ever, and they expect this new technique to accelerate graphene commercialization towards applications in electronics.

This process was discovered by researchers at Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in collaboration with Sungkyunkwan University. The process can be used to grow single crystal graphene on the current semiconductor wafer scale while maintaining graphene's electric and mechanical properties. We do not have a lot of information yet, but it seems that Samsung was very excited about this research breakthrough.

Advanced engineering materials maker Versarien announced that it acquired 2-DTech (a subsidiary of the University of Manchester) for £440,000 (around $740,000) in cash and ordinary shares.

2-DTech makes and supplies 2D materials, including CVD-made graphene, graphene platelets, graphene oxide and other 2D materials. The company also offers prototyping of graphene based devices. Versarien also plans to sign collaboration agreements with The University of Manchester regarding graphene.

Cientifica entered into an option agreement with Rainmaker Technologies - to invest up to 49.9% in the company. According to Cientifica, Rainmaker will work with Perpetuus Carbon Technology to supply graphene materials for Rainmaker's products. Rainmaker plans to bring new graphene-enabled products to the market in 2015.

UK-based Perpetuus Carbon Technologies entered the graphene supply market in February 2014. The company produces graphene materials (GNPs) in its new 100 annual-ton factory, and in March 2014 Perpetuus launched two new graphene based products (developed in collaboration with Gwent Electronics Group).

This is Cientifica's second announced agreement, following their exclusivity agreement with London Graphene Ltd to develop technology using graphene for energy storage. Last month it was reported that Cientifica wanted to raise around £300,000 - £400,000 of new equity capital, but due to difficult market conditions, this action failed.

Grafoid signed an agreement with Altamat to construct an atomization facility to produce MesoGraf graphene-based powders and filaments for 3D printing. The agreement gives Grafoid an exclusive global right to apply technologies invented by Altamat's Dr. Henein for use in a wide range of functionalized powders for 3D printing applications.

Grafoid is not the first company to develop graphene-enhanced materials for 3D Printing. Last year AGT launched a similar research project in collaboration with Ukraine's Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology ("KIPT"). Earlier this year Graphene Labs and Lomiko Metals launched a new company called Graphene 3D Labs to develop high-performance graphene-enhanced materials for 3D Printing.

Researchers from England and Ireland's Trinity College developed a method to produce graphene flakes using very simple equipment. The idea is to simply mix powdered graphite with N-methyl-pyrrolidone and then mix it in a blender at high speed. This results in graphene flakes which are about a nanometer thick and 100 nanometer long. This method actually work with a regular kitchen blender

The researchers say that the blender blades separate the graphite into graphene sheets without damaging the 2D structure. During their experiments, they made several grams of the graphene material, but they say it can be scaled up to produce in ton quantities.