Levidian’s Arun Prakash Aranga Raju featured in Carbon Review
Dr Arun Prakash Aranga Raju, Technical Lead – Graphene Commercialisation (MENA) at Levidian, has been featured as the cover story interview in the August 2026 issue of TechnoBiz Carbon Review.
The interview explores Arun’s journey through graphene research, scale-up, application development and commercialisation, while also looking at how the industry is evolving as graphene moves from laboratory research towards wider industrial adoption.
Arun’s career in graphene began unexpectedly while studying for his MSc in Polymer Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Manchester. After losing a coin toss over dissertation projects, he found himself working on graphene and soon experienced what he describes as his “wow” moment: seeing a monolayer graphene sample with his own eyes.
Since then, his career has followed graphene’s own transition towards commercialisation. He has worked on scaling production from laboratory quantities to commercial manufacturing, supported industry-led application programmes at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre, and joined Levidian in 2022 to help build Levidian Applied Technologies. In 2025, he moved to the MENA region to lead graphene commercialisation and technical development.
A central theme of the interview is the increasing maturity of the graphene industry. Arun discusses how the focus has shifted away from early hype and towards the factors that really matter for industrial customers: consistency, repeatability, process integration and demonstrable commercial value.
He also explores one of the biggest practical challenges in graphene adoption: making the material easier to integrate into existing manufacturing processes. Rather than expecting customers to redesign their production lines around graphene, Arun argues that the industry should aim to provide concentrates, masterbatches and pre-dispersed systems that fit more naturally into established processes.
The interview also looks at the applications showing strong commercial potential. Arun highlights paints and coatings, particularly anticorrosion coatings, alongside thermal management, polymers, metals and performance fluids as areas where graphene is increasingly moving towards real-world deployment.
With a particular focus on the MENA region, Arun discusses the growing appetite for advanced materials across sectors including coatings, oil and gas, metals and construction. He also highlights the importance of collaboration between industry, academia and government in developing a sustainable regional graphene ecosystem.
Looking towards 2030, Arun sees the future of graphene being shaped by a combination of larger-volume applications and specialised, high-value uses, with success ultimately depending on reliable performance, clear evidence and genuine customer value.
The full interview with Dr Arun Prakash Aranga Raju appears in Carbon Review – Issue 2 | August 2026, published by TechnoBiz.
Read the full interview in Carbon Review: https://publication.technobiz.org/
