A new consortium (called the Graphene REACH registration consortium) was launched in 2017 to handle REACH graphene registration in the EU. The consortium members, The Sixth Element Material Technology, NanoXplore and Applied Graphene Materials announced that the joint registration dossiers for graphene and graphene oxide have been submitted to the ECHA.
The consortium is also preparing a JRD for reduced graphene oxide, and hopes to submit it before the end of 2018. The consortium issues a callout for companies (whether graphene producers or importers) to join the consortium or buy a letter of access to the new registrations.
The EU requires all companies that either produce or sell over 1 ton of substances per annumn in the EU to participate in REACH. The current registration limits yearly sells to 10 tons, but the consortium is also aiming to start working on dossier updates for higher volumes (10 to 100 tons per year).
Interestingly the Graphene REACH registration consortia defines the substances as ones with thickness of less than 300 nm, thus covering all substances which are thinner than the substances as defined by the graphite consortia (> 350 nm). The new graphene ISO standard is much more strict – graphene nanoplatelet is defined as typically between 1 to 3 nm thick, while anything larger (and lower than 100 nm) is defined as graphite nanoplateles.
