November 17, 2003 – Hosokawa Micron Corp. has developed a process to clean impurities from the surface of nanoparticles, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Hosokawa’s powder R&D subsidiary has created a treatment process that uses a momentary plasma discharge to strip impurities from the surface of nanoparticles after being compressed in a centrifuge. The end result is nanoparticles such as titanium oxide that clump together less, with a fivefold increase in photocatalytic activity. Hosokawa is now developing a machine to facilitate this cleaning process, with a goal of 50 million yen in sales by the end of 2003.