John Lettow ’95 (Photo: Paul Morse/Courtesy Vorbeck Materials Corp.)
Vorbeck Materials, a Maryland-based company that has developed cutting-edge applications for graphene, was established in 2006, but two of the collaborators who launched the company have a history that began in the mid-1990s in a Princeton engineering lab.
At the time, Vorbeck president John Lettow ’95 was a chemical engineering student, and Ilhan Aksay, a Princeton professor and director for the company, was advising the senior’s thesis project. A decade later, the two started working together again, this time to bring Aksay’s research out of the lab and into the marketplace. (
Read more from the June 10, 2009, issue.)
Graphene, a super-thin, super-strong, and super-conductive form of graphite, has drawn plenty of interest from materials scientists, but Vorbeck was the first to launch a commercial graphene product (a conductive ink for electronics). To expand its production and sales, the company
received a reported $10 million from investors in December.
Earlier this month, Vorbeck received another boost when the Department of Energy named it one of “
America’s Next Top Energy Innovators.” Three companies shared the honor; Vorbeck was credited for using technology that originated in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to improve lithium-ion batteries — versatile, rechargeable batteries used in devices that range from laptops to electric cars.
In a
news release, Energy Secretary Steven Chu congratulated the winning innovators and said that the contest was part of a larger effort to let startup companies “do what they do best: Create new products, new industries, and new jobs.”
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