GrafTech Announces Its Fourth Consecutive R&D 100 Award

Citation

(2006), "GrafTech Announces Its Fourth Consecutive R&D 100 Award", Anti-Corrosion Methods and Materials, Vol. 53 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/acmm.2006.12853fab.013

GrafTech Announces Its Fourth Consecutive R&D 100 Award

GrafTech Announces Its Fourth Consecutive R&D 100 Award

PARMA, Ohio – (Business Wire) – GrafTech International Ltd (NYSE:GTI) announced it was awarded the prestigious R&D 100 Award for the fourth consecutive year. This year's award is for a new product line, GRAFOAMe carbon foam, a unique material that is produced in a range of densities and which has properties suited for many industries. Diane Artman, Carbon Foam Business Manager of GrafTech commented, “We are pleased to announce this significant accomplishment. Winning our fourth consecutive R&D 100 Award for GRAFOAM carbon foam demonstrates our company's commitment to commercializing new products. GRAFOAM carbon foam is a novel material with potential breakthrough applications for aerospace manufacturers, military defense, and safety structures.”

GRAFOAM carbon foam

The high strength and light weight of GRAFOAM carbon foam make it an ideal material for composite tooling in the aerospace industry. Major aerospace manufacturers are focusing new developments on lightweight carbon composite parts to improve fuel efficiency and reduce maintenance since these parts do not experience the same fatigue as metal. The tools required to make the carbon composite wings and fuselages can be large and heavy, and result in high manufacturing costs. GRAFOAM carbon foam is lightweight and strong, with excellent dimensional stability, and offers a new cost-effective solution for these tooling applications.

GRAFOAM carbon foam is a true multifunctional material making it an excellent solution for various applications including the multi-layer panels used in defense and safety structures. GRAFOAM carbon foam's key performance qualities include its light weight, high strength, impact and fire resistance, excellent thermal insulation capacity, electromagnetic shielding, sound dampening properties, and corrosion and rot resistance. Demand has grown for new products having an array of versatile characteristics that can outperform traditional materials used in sandwich panels.

The R&D 100 Awards were established in 1963 and provide a mark of excellence known to industry, government, and academia as proof that the selected product is one of the most innovative ideas of the year. The criteria for the R&D 100 Award is demonstrable technological significance compared with competing products and technologies. This means that the product should exhibit orders of magnitude of improvement over existing products. In the past, the R&D Awards have recognized many significant products including the automated teller machine, the fax machine, the digital wristwatch, the Kodak Photo CD and HDTV.

About GrafTech International Ltd

GrafTech International Ltd (NYSE:GTI) is one of the world's largest manufacturers and providers of high quality synthetic and natural graphite and carbon based products and technical and research and development services, with customers in about 80 countries engaged in the manufacture of steel, aluminum, silicon metal, automotive products and electronics. The company manufactures graphite electrodes and cathodes, products essential to the production of electric arc furnace steel and aluminum. GrafTech also manufactures thermal management, fuel cell and other specialty graphite and carbon products for, and provides services to, the electronics, power generation, semiconductor, transportation, petrochemical and other metals markets. GrafTech is the leading manufacturer in all of its major product lines, with 13 state of the art manufacturing facilities strategically located on four continents. For additional information on GrafTech International, visit the company's web site at www.graftech.com