By Jim Dukart
NanoCon Show Daily
Sept. 22 2006 — If Wednesday’s opening day of NanoCon 2006 was primarily about the overall picture for nanotechnology in the near-term future, Thursday turned greater attention to specific instances of nanotech applications and developments today.
Mark Verbrugge, director of the materials and processes laboratory for General Motors Research & Development Center, started the show with a presentation of current developments driving nanotech in the automotive world. Two key areas Verbrugge focused on were energy storage and automotive materials.
On the issue of energy storage, he presented the challenges facing car makers who are eager to develop hybrid vehicles or — eventually — fully electric or hydrogen-powered cars and trucks.
One of the toughest challenges comes in moving hydrogen in and out of storage (vehicle fuel tanks). Nanotechnology, he said, promises to help via nanocrystalline magnesium-nickle particles that feature larger surface area, and thus faster absorption, than today’s prevalent automotive technology. Similarly, nanotechnology as applied to car batteries presents smaller particles and thus increased surface area within batteries, speeding up electrochemical processes and thus reducing voltage loss.
The goal, Verbrugge said, will be to produce vehicles that are more fuel efficient, lighter and also have improved thermoelectric waste heat recovery. At the same time, carmakers must develop systems that allow consumers to refuel (or recharge) less frequently than is now required of prototype electric or hydrogen vehicles.
Carl Kohrt, president and CEO of scientific research management organization Battelle, followed Verbrugge with comments about the worldwide growth of nanotech plus observations on current and near-term future nanotech applications.
Kohrt said recent developments in nanotech tools and nano-science are allowing companies and research institutions to dream up solutions that seemed impossible just a few years ago. He added the point that relatively low barriers to entry — compared to, say, space exploration — mean companies in smaller countries such as Singapore and Ireland are able to participate in the nanotech revolution.
Kohrt focused on three major areas he sees for nanotech processes and applications. First, in the energy sector, he sees significant efficiency gains for solar panels with the development and implementation of nano photovoltaics, using metal-oxide nanorods coated in polymers that both increase light absorption and improve electron affinity. Though many of these solar cells are still at the experimental stage, he predicted improvements of up to 30 percent in solar cell efficiency in the coming months.
Kohrt called the global need for clean water a “mega-issue” for the 21st century, noting that nanotechnology promises to aid in addressing both biological and chemical contaminants in drinking water supplies. The third area that Kohrt addressed was that of national security.
Nanotechnology offers some very promising solutions to many problems,” Kohrt concluded. “Are those problems totally solved? No. But at least we can start to see some solutions. Do we hope there will be other problems that nanotechnology can solve? Yes.”
Finally, Kohrt extolled nanotech participants and observers to look not specifically at given products, but rather at platforms from which many different solutions can be derived.
Those platforms were the subject of two more presentations Thursday, including one by David Gusdorf, director of development for the Washington Technology Center (WTC) and Don Montgomery, president and CEO of Nanomaterials Discovery Corp. (NDC).
Both spoke about how their partnership was instrumental in bringing to market a lower density microelectrode array chip for evaluating nanomaterials for battery operations, something NDC had an interest in doing but could not have done without the facilities and resources offered by the Washington Technology Center.
As a small company, Montgomery explained, NDC did not have the on-staff expertise or resources it would have needed to develop the chip itself. “We needed the support of the WTC to help us develop a promising opportunity,” he said. “It helped me avoid bringing on an experienced and expensive electrical engineering staff.”
WTC, Gusdorf countered, was able to not only provide the tools, support and research focus that NDC lacked, but also served as an important link, offering access to researchers at nearby universities in the Seattle area as well as sources for government and public support.
The morning’s final session featured a “role play” in which moderator Michael Lefenfeld, CEO of SiGNa Chemistry, asked panelists to guide him through the process of intellectual property protection for a new and promising nanotech technology or application. The panelists offered a range of advice to Lefenfeld, pointing out both the opportunities and a few of the potential pitfalls of sharing a promising invention or technology with other groups.