Portugal may be taking a decisive step in the global race for stealth, with a graphene-based radar-absorbing material that could render drones and warplanes almost undetectable.
Portugal is developing a material based on graphene that can significantly reduce the visibility of drones and military aircraft to radar, an innovation that could position Europe in the race for stealth technology.
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The project is led by GTechPlasma (source in Portuguese), a spin-off from the Plasma and Nuclear Fusion Institute at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, which has created a plasma-based system to produce customised, high-quality graphene materials.
"Right now, 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, a key characteristic 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-absorbing coatings," says the researcher from Instituto Superior Técnico, stressing that similar solutions are rare and tightly controlled at international level.
"At present, there is no other solution in Europe, and even worldwide only the United States has one. But the material that, for example, coats the F-35 is a material that cannot be exported. So we have a material ‘made in’ Portugal with strong application potential," says Bruno Soares Gonçalves.
Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms just one atom thick, in this case produced from precursors such as ethyl alcohol or methane, using plasma technology.
The team says that, using innovative plasma technology, it can control the material at atomic level, allowing its properties to be adjusted 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 atomic level. And that is what we are able to do with our device, which is patented in the United States, Japan and Europe," explains the president of the Plasma and Nuclear Fusion Institute.
One of the most important applications is in military aviation, to make an aircraft invisible to radar. "Our estimates for what our material can achieve 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 far more difficult to detect."
Reducing the radar signature can provide a significant strategic advantage in a war scenario.
"This becomes important because the aircraft is not detected, or is detected too late, and that is a military advantage, managing to be picked up as late as possible by radar during military missions," Bruno Soares Gonçalves tells Euronews.
The technology is taking steps towards industrialisation, with GTechPlasma’s devices already producing 40 milligrams per minute of high-quality graphene. But the company intends to increase its capacity and already has an industrial partner to scale up production.
The company Plasmaphene (source in Portuguese), which has received Compete 2030 funding and is based in Vila Viçosa, will industrialise the machine for producing high-quality graphene.
"Our goal on the factory floor is to have multiple devices, not only because of the redundancy that brings, but also because it allows us to produce multiple materials simultaneously in different devices. In practice, our machine is a platform for multiple materials. We can change the recipe and obtain different materials," the Técnico researcher explains.
The company also aims to expand partnerships with defence-sector firms, having already supplied 260 grams of this radar-absorbing material to a Portuguese drone manufacturer.
At the moment, the material is produced as a very light black powder, but the aim is to develop ready-to-apply 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 goal is to provide solutions that are as close as possible to something the client can apply, instead of supplying just a powder that the client then has to work out how to integrate," says the GTechPlasma representative.
The innovation could put Portugal at the forefront of graphene-based stealth technologies, with application potential far beyond the defence sector.
