Portugal is developing a graphene-based material capable of significantly reducing the visibility of drones and military aircraft to radar, an innovation that could put Europe in the race for stealth technology.
The project is led by GTechPlasma (source in Portuguese), a spin-off from the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, which has created a plasma-based system to produce tailor-made, high-quality graphene materials.
“At the moment, we are very focused on developing coatings for radar and electromagnetic radiation absorption,” explains Bruno Soares Gonçalves, co-founder of GTechPlasma, in an interview with Euronews.
The material has been developed to absorb electromagnetic radiation, including radar waves, an essential feature for stealth applications.
“The most obvious applications at the moment are in the defence sector, but there are many other areas where this type of material has potential for electromagnetic shielding, to reduce radiation. That is why we believe we have an extremely interesting material for radar-absorbent coatings,” says the Instituto Superior Técnico researcher, stressing that similar solutions are rare and subject to strict international controls.
“At present, there is no other such solution in Europe and, even worldwide, it is only found in the United States. But the material that, for example, coats the F-35s is a material that cannot be exported. So we have a ‘made in Portugal’ material with high application potential,” says Bruno Soares Gonçalves.
Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms just one atom thick, produced in this case from precursors such as ethanol or methane using plasma technology.
The team says that, by using innovative plasma technology, it can control the material at the atomic level, allowing its properties to be tuned for different applications.
Beyond radar absorption, the technology could be used for hydrogen storage or the separation of rare earths and uranium, according to the researcher.
“There are many other applications where graphene and its derivatives can be used, but for that you need to control the entire process at the atomic level. And that is what we are able to do with our device, which is patented in the United States, Japan and Europe,” adds the president of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion.
One of the most important applications is in military aviation, in order to make an aircraft invisible to radar. “Our estimates for our material are that an F-16 would have the radar signature of a bird. That means a huge reduction in radar signature, making the aircraft invisible and much harder to detect.”
Reducing the radar signature can provide a significant strategic advantage in a wartime scenario.
“This becomes important because the aircraft is not picked up, or is picked up too late and therefore it is an advantage from a military point of view to be detected as late as possible by radar during military missions,” Bruno Soares Gonçalves tells Euronews.
The technology is moving towards industrialisation, with GTechPlasma’s devices already producing 40 milligrams per minute of high-quality graphene. But the company wants to increase its capacity and already has an industrial partner to scale up production.
The company Plasmaphene (source in Portuguese), which received funding from Compete 2030 and is based in Vila Viçosa, will industrialise the machine for producing high-quality graphene.
“Our aim on the factory floor is to have multiple devices, not only for the redundancy this brings, but also for the possibility of producing multiple materials simultaneously in different devices. Because, in reality, our machine is a device for multiple materials. We can change the recipe and obtain different materials,” explains the Técnico researcher.
The company also intends to expand its partnerships with defence companies, having already supplied 260 grams of this radar-absorbing material to a Portuguese drone manufacturer.
At present, the material is produced as a very light black powder, but the aim is to develop ready-to-use solutions, closer to the end user. That includes the development of coatings or paints that can be applied directly to surfaces such as drones.
“The aim is to supply solutions that are as close as possible to something the client can apply, instead of supplying just a powder and leaving the client to work out how to integrate it,” says the head of GTechPlasma.
The innovation could place Portugal at the forefront of graphene-based stealth technologies, with potential applications far beyond the defence sector.