June 17, 2008 — Seashell Technology, a nanotechnology development company, has successfully scaled manufacturing processes for silver nanorod and nanowire production to kilogram scale quantities. The ability to deliver uniform nanomaterial populations at this scale will enable the successful commercial development of unique devices for use in biomedical, thermal, electronic, metrology, environmental and defense applications.
“The enhanced functional properties conferred by integration of nanomaterials into composites have long been recognized, yet the successful commercial manufacture of sufficient quantities has limited the development of improved products incorporating these nanomaterials.” says Dr. David Schultz, vice-president of Seashell Technology. “We have overcome this barrier for the production of silver nanowires and nanorods and have delivered multi-kilogram amounts for evaluation in customer specific applications.”
Silver nanorods and nanowires have been used in research laboratories as components in electronic and biomedical devices, providing a potentially superior alternative to currently available carbon nanotube technology.
Seashell Technology supplies nanoparticles and nanostructured materials for academic research, development projects and for industrial processes. Seashell Technology’s manufacturing processes can be used to create silver nanorods and nanowires with diameters as thin as 50 nanometers and lengths as great as several hundred microns. Controlled processing allows the synthesis of nanowire populations with defined uniform size ranges. Gram quantity batch size manufacture can be performed for initial assessment of nanomaterial utilization in customer applications.
The interdisciplinary team at Seashell Technology has the capability to manufacture a wide range of multifunctional particles with nanoscale precision for a variety of applications. Ongoing commercialization efforts include the development of a number of nanofabricated specialized coatings with unique functionality. Specialized particles used as transport vehicles for high efficiency delivery of DNA and siRNA to target cells and tissues are offered for use in biotechnology research by academic and industrial scientists.