Category Archives: Fuel Cells

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WESTWOOD, Mass., Oct. 27, 2003  — Brace yourself. The fullerenes are coming.
Nano-C Corp. is the latest company to push its way into the market for mass-production of fullerenes, amid signs that major chemical and manufacturing businesses have warmed up to the tiny carbon molecule’s potential. Thanks to technology pioneered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nano-C can now affordably make fullerenes by the ton — opening vast new commercial possibilities. 

The 12-person startup signed its first customer this summer, a subsidiary of a Japanese conglomerate. Company executives, who declined to name the customer, say its fullerenes eventually could be used in everything from chemical coatings to semiconductors to pharmaceuticals.

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“U.S. companies aren’t quite as excited yet,” says Gordon Fowler, Nano-C’s chief executive officer. “In Japan the companies are more open-minded.”

Nano-C Inc. has developed what is known as combustion synthesis: hydrocarbons burned in specially controlled atmospheres, which allows fullerenes to be harvested from the soot. The soot is nearly pure fullerene; that makes combustion far more cost-effective than the older method of arc synthesis, where an electrical jolt is delivered to a piece of carbon and fullerenes are scraped from the resulting residue.

“It’s just inherently very efficient,” says Jack Howard, the MIT professor who developed combustion synthesis and now serves as Nano-C’s chairman. “We don’t see any alternatives.”

Howard and Fowler might not need to look for one. Nano-C and its lone rival in combustion synthesis, TDA Research Inc. in Colorado, both have paying customers in Japan eager to put fullerenes to use. Pilot facilities in Japan can make about 40 tons of fullerenes per year right now, with plans to scale up to several hundred tons by the end of the decade.

Fowler admits that fullerenes were hyped in the early 1990s with little to show for it, but he insists that the fullerene adoption curve is at an inflection point. “How steep is that curve and how long will it last? I don’t know,” Fowler says. “This won’t solve all the world’s problems, but it tackles some really interesting ones.”

The problem with fullerenes so far? Their high cost. For example, fullerenes of only 60 atoms (C-60 fullerenes, which look like a soccer ball) are the least expensive and still fetch $25 per gram. Larger fullerenes can cost thousands. At such high prices, few researchers could afford to study them — and without that demand, nobody bothered to make them.

Nano-C and TDA hope to break that chicken-and-egg cycle with combustion synthesis. Both say they can make C-60 fullerenes for about $4 or $5 per gram. They expect the cost to tumble below $1 with large-scale equipment.

Nano-C has a prototype burner in its headquarters that can produce one ton of fullerenes a year. A metal cylinder standing 10 feet tall with various monitors and probes poking into it, the flame burns at the bottom; fullerenes are collected at the top. The standard atmosphere in the cylinder is a low-pressure mixture of oxygen and benzene, heated to more than 3,140 degrees Farenheight. By manipulating conditions inside the reactor, workers can make different types of fullerenes.

At the moment, TDA is slightly ahead in the commercialization race. It sold several burners to Frontier Carbon Corp., a Tokyo-based company that can make 40 tons per year. A spokesman at Frontier said demand is growing at 500 percent annually, and he expects to churn out 300 tons of fullerenes per year by 2007.

Hideki Murayama, Frontier’s head of research, says the company already has 300 buyers for its fullerenes. One customer uses them as an additive in a polymer coating for bowling balls. The bowling balls go by the name Nanodesu, Japanese for “It’s nano!”

More lucrative uses in lubricants, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics are further off, Murayama says. “These applications have been under development, but we know they need an array of evaluation steps before commercial use,” he said.

Michael Alford, senior chemist at TDA, agrees with Howard that combustion synthesis “is very close to the most efficient way to make fullerenes.” He expects fullerenes to find their way into fuel cells and chemical resists in semiconductor manufacture. Another hot item: carboxylated fullerenes, useful in pharmaceuticals. Alford predicts that adoption in Big Pharma is still five years away, “but it will be pretty impressive.”

Nano-C and TDA Research both trace their roots to Howard’s MIT lab; one of his graduate students helped develop combustion synthesis and took the idea to TDA in the mid-1990s. After a brief patent skirmish MIT licensed the technology to both companies.

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Company file: Nano-C Corp.
(last updated Oct. 27, 2003)

Company
Nano-C Corporation

Headquarters
33 Southwest Park
Westwood, MA 02090

History
Incorporated in 2001, Nano-C is targeting affordable large-scale production of fullerenes (ultrasmall carbon molecules) using technology developed at MIT by company founder Jack Howard.

Industry
Nanomaterials

Employees
12

Small tech-related products and services
Nano-C’s proprietary combustion synthesis process is more efficient than the commonly used arc synthesis method. Using their on-site reactor, the company hopes to shorten time-to-market for fullerene applications.

Management
Dr. Jack B. Howard: chairman and founder
Gordon Fowler: chief executive officer
Dr. David Kronholm: vice president of research & development

Selected strategic partners and customers
Fullerene International (Mitsubishi affiliate)
CarboLex

Selected competitors
BuckyUSA
Luna nanoMaterials
Materials and Electrochemical Research Corporation
TDA Research (uses combustion synthesis process based on Howard’s research)

Barriers to market
Because of prior fullerene “hype” in the US that did not materialize into business, Nano-C may find it challenging to convince American companies of the value fullerenes can add to existing products. Additionally, fullerenes are still expensive to produce, and Nano-C will need to bring production costs down greatly in order to attract a broader customer base.

Relevant patents
Production of fullerenic soot in flames
Combustion method for producing fullerenes

Contact
URL: http://www.nano-c.com/
Tel: 781-407-9417
Fax: 781-407-9419
Email: [email protected]


– Research by Gretchen McNeely

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Oct. 17, 2003 – Buckyballs, the soccer ball-shaped molecules that helped kick-start interest in nanoscale science and technology in the 1990s, finally made the big time. The biotech startup C Sixty announced Thursday that it is partnering with the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. to develop drugs based on buckyballs, formally known as buckminsterfullerenes.

If they are successful, fullerenes could find a use that is both medically beneficial and lucrative, and open the door for high-volume production of fullerenes.

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“We expect to be driving the market for fullerenes and be a large consumer of fullerenes,” said Russ Lebovitz, C Sixty’s vice president of business development. C Sixty modifies fullerenes to make them biocompatible and to enhance their therapeutic properties. A handful of companies worldwide sell fullerenes, which to date have lacked a high-volume application.

C Sixty is focusing on the antioxidant properties of fullerenes. Fullerenes soak up cell-damaging free radicals, a byproduct from oxygen reacting with other chemicals in the body. Free radicals likely play a role in aging and fatal degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. 

 “This is a large opportunity in major diseases for which there is no treatment now,” Lebovitz said. “This could have an enormous impact on lots of people.”

The partnership gives Merck the rights to C Sixty’s fullerene-based drugs. A research group headed by Dennis Choi, the executive vice president for neurosciences at Merck Research Laboratories and a noted neurological researcher, will collaborate with C Sixty to conduct animal trials with the drugs. Before joining Merck, Choi led research programs at the University of Washington in St. Louis that focused on fullerenes as free radical scavengers.

Merck could begin clinical trials “in the near future” if the animal trials prove successful, said Anita Larsen, a spokesperson for Merck. Choi was traveling and unavailable for comment.   

C Sixty negotiated a three-pronged deal with Merck, said Philip Epstein, C Sixty’s chief executive. C Sixty will supply Merck with its fullerene compounds, license its research for the animal studies and give Merck an exclusive licensing option to market and sell the drugs. The commercial option will kick in only if a fullerene drug meets U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards.

C Sixty will bring its expertise in the chemistry and chemical-biological interplay of fullerenes into the partnership, while Merck will provide its experience in animal and human trials and in negotiating the federal regulatory maze. Merck intends to target its efforts toward developing drugs for two specific therapies, but did not name the diseases.

C Sixty will continue to explore potential therapeutic uses of fullerenes for applications as varied as cardiovascular drugs to skin creams. Lebowitz said the company is in contact with several institutions to begin animal studies targeting various diseases.

C Sixty’s name plays off the scientific shorthand for fullerenes, which are made of 60 linked carbon atoms, or C60. Fullerenes made a splash in the scientific world when they were unveiled in 1985 by chemists Robert Curl and Richard Smalley at Rice University and Sir Harry Kroto at the University of Sussex. The trio won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1996 for their discovery.

They proved that fullerenes were a third form of carbon, after graphite and diamond, and named the molecules buckminsterfullerenes because they resembled the geodesic dome invented by Buckminster Fuller. Buckyballs and another form of fullerene called carbon nanotubes are expected to become key ingredients in some nanotech products.
 
Interest in buckyballs skyrocked after 1990 when physicists Donald Huffman at Arizona State University and Wolfgang Kratschmer at Max Planck Institute in Germany reported a reasonably easy method for making quantities of the material. The method was licensed to Materials and Electrochemical Research Corp. (MER Corp.) in Arizona, one of a handful of fullerene suppliers in existence today.

Others include a joint venture in Japan among Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and Research Corporation Technologies; TDA Research in Colorado; Nano-C in Massachusetts, and CarboLex Inc. in Kentucky. Prices vary from about $45 to $190 a gram, depending on purity and other factors.

Applications have been modest. A division of the manufacturer American Bowling Service puts buckyballs in the shell of its Nanodesu bowling ball. Sony announced it was developing a fullerene-based fuel cell in 2001 but has been mostly silent since then.

Lebovitz and Epstein said they expect their suppliers will be able to ramp up production and lower costs as demand increases. They plan to work with a variety of suppliers to get their fullerenes, and anticipate the interest shown by Merck should inspire others who make, use or study buckyballs.

“From our perspective, this is the first major validation of fullerenes,” Epstein said. “It’s a major milestone.”

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Sept. 15, 2003 – Although nano-size grains are at the heart of Inframat Corp.’s coatings, it’s the company’s proprietary solution plasma spray (SPS) technology that has captured the interest of jet engine-makers and land-based turbine manufacturers.

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Developed through grants and military contracts, Inframat has spent the last five years perfecting a patented (11 so far) coatings technology that breaks from the industry norm of using powdered feedstocks. Instead, the company is supplying potential users with a liquid solution carrying nano-size grains of material for use as thermal barrier coatings.

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That is a major advancement for the industry, said Keith Legg, president of Rowan Technology Group. Using an aqueous feedstock allows for an almost infinite spectrum of mixtures to be used at the point of application.

“The problem with a powdered coating, if you want to coat nanomaterials, is you can’t feed nanomaterials into the plasma gun,” he said.

This could mean product improvements previously unattainable such as jet-engine turbine blades that withstand higher temperatures, said David Reisner, Inframat’s co-founder, president and CEO. One result might be hotter-burning, more efficient jet engines, for example. Nano-size grains coat more evenly and allow for stress fractures to form throughout the coating, making for smoother expansion and contraction through hot and cold cycles that can lead to costly cracking of standard coatings.

Also, the technology requires relatively low investment and no serious retrofitting of existing equipment to get started, Reisner said.

GE, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney, the three major jet-engine makers, are lining up to evaluate the technology for possible licensing; Inframat’s preferred means of doing business at the high-end of the market.

“Our expectation is we’re going to be entering licensing in the very near future,” said Reisner. “We don’t fancy ourselves as being the FAA-approved coaters for engine products.”

Other markets for the technology include coating everything from oxygen sensors in cars to fuel cells and the pistons of diesel engines, said John Burdick, an Inframat co-founder and vice president of Business Development. In these lower-end, mass markets, where regulations are less problematic, Inframat is considering setting up shop as a coatings company instead of licensing out the technology, he said.

The company’s spray-dry process for making the nano-grains that actually do the coating (the water burns off in the plasma gun’s 10,000-degree heat) has yielded other opportunities as well. Inframat has contracts to supply a ductile ceramic material to the Navy for use in coating submarine periscopes and medical equipment makers are evaluating its nano-size hydroxyapatite (HA) for use in coating artificial joint implants.

Still, these and other materials-based opportunities are side businesses compared with its SPS play.

“There’s no rocket science involved in making the solution,” said Reisner. “That’s why the SPS is a licensing play. It’s hard to imagine a business just selling the feedstock solution.”

The company’s next step, according to Neil Gordon, a partner at nano-consultancy Sygertech and a fan of the company’s technology, is to focus.

“I like what they are doing and they’ve done a great job up to now, but their challenge is in the area of commercialization and business rather than technology, which they seem to be really good at,” said Gordon. “So, how do they make it to the next level?”

Reisner’s answer: In 2002, Inframat took in $1.6 million through product sales and government grants and is now tailoring its business plan to attract angel investors and will be floating a VC funding round.

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Company file: Inframat Corp.
(last updated Sept. 15, 2003)

Company
Inframat Corporation

Headquarters
74 Batterson Park Road
Farmington, CT 06032

History
Founded in 1996, Inframat was recognized in 2002 by Deloitte & Touche, who gave the firm a Connecticut Technology Fast50 Award. Prior to this, Inframat had already received a 2001 R&D 100 Award, as well as a DUS&T award and 2002 CQIA Gold Innovation Prize.

Industry
Nanomaterials

Employees
21 — 30

Small tech-related products and services
Inframat has developed a nanoparticle-based solution plasma spray (SPS) coating technology that can enhance the quality and performance of coated components.

Inframat hopes to primarily employ a licensing model for its SPS technology in high-end sectors, while marketing its nanocomposite coatings directly to lower-end mass markets.

Management

  • Dr. James C. Hsiao: co-founder and chairman of the board

  • Dr. David E. Reisner: co-founder, president and chief executive officer

  • Dr. Danny Xiao: co-founder and vice president of research & development

  • John M. Burdick: co-founder and vice president of corporate development

  • Paul E.C. Bryant: chief technology officer

Investment history
To date Inframat has gained approximately $8 MM in revenue through government R&D grants, product sales and collaborations with other firms.

Revenues
$1.6 million (2002)

Selected strategic partners and customers

  • US Nanocorp

  • Shanghai Dahao Enterprise Investment Company

  • MacroMaterials Inc.

Selected competitors

Barriers to market
While Inframat has established its technological capabilities, it now faces the challenge of positioning itself in the industry and identifying niche markets.

Relevant patents

Contact


– Research by Gretchen McNeely

 

 

 

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July 29, 2003 — From medicine to coatings, submarines and bowling balls, nanotechnology is making inroads into markets large and small. But only a handful of industries are specifically looking to nano for solutions, process improvements and outright advancements otherwise unachievable with current technology.

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The computer industry, for example, is shopping around for nanotech solutions. While today’s silicon-based transistors continue their downward size spiral, theoretical limits are being reached and the industry is looking to nanotubes and molecular memory to bridge the gap between today’s wish lists and tomorrow’s products.

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Automotive and aerospace are other industries that not only have nanotech targeted on corporate radar, but are singling it out to solve a myriad of problems, from improved sensors and lighter-weight materials to longer-lasting running boards and mirror housings, said Nathan Tinker, executive vice president of the NanoBusiness Alliance.

Still, according the Freedonia Group, the overall market for nanomaterials in 2002 barely cracked $200 million and mostly was made up of improved metal oxides, clays, ceramics and metals, said Mike Richardson, Freedonia’s industrial analyst.

The largest single market for any one nanomaterial today is the $75 million market for nanoscale silica used in chemical/mechanical planerization (CMP) slurries to smooth chips for the semiconductor industry. Coming in at number two isn’t some new, exotic material, either; it’s basically an improved version of rust: iron oxide for use in the pigment industry.

In 2002, $10 million worth of nanoscale iron oxide was sold, which amounts to 10 percent of the overall $200 million dollar market. Not bad in terms of dollars, but at $50 to $60 per pound, actual materials volume was miniscule compared with the pennies-per- pound bulk market. Nanoscale titanium dioxide and zinc are also widely used by cosmetics makers in transparent sunblock.

Nanotube sales barely even register compared with the overall markets the materials are selling into, said Tinker. For example, he calculates the plastics industry bought about $4 million worth of nanotubes in 2002. Advanced composites accounted for approximately $3 million in sales; fibers and textiles another $2.5 million; and research brought up the rear at around $850,000.

There is general agreement, however, that the best near-term markets are automotive, particularly for catalytic converters and sensors; aerospace, which is always looking to save weight, increase durability and has the deep pockets to do so; and defense.

US Global Nanospace Inc. in particular has tapped into the defense space with its line of nanofiber filters and G-Lam ballistic materials that can stop .50 caliber, armor-piercing projectiles. But, even with the huge increase in homeland security and defense spending (much of which has yet to be allocated), the company is still very much in development mode with only a few concrete sales under its belt.

“The turrets and things like that are very specialized items, so the quantities are reasonably small,” said John Robinson, US Global’s chairman and chief executive. “We’re not manufacturing lawn chairs that go into Wal-Mart.”

Other near-term markets looking for nanotech solutions include energy, in the form of improved photovoltaics, longer-lasting batteries and fuel cells; biosensors for detection of biological and chemical agents; and the chemical industry in its pursuit of better catalysts, said Neil Gordon, a partner at Sygertech Consulting Group Inc. and president of the Canadian NanoBusiness Alliance.

In fact, the chemical industry’s long-term Vision 2020 plan calls for a heavy reliance on nanotech for improvements across a wide spectrum of activities, Gordon said.

With so much interest in nano and the number of players growing daily, however, it is still too early to know which industries will be the early adopters and which will only flirt with nano until something better comes along, cautioned Bill Madia, Battelle Memorial Institute’s executive vice president of laboratory operations. That, as always with any emerging technology, is the $64,000 question.

“I don’t think anyone has a good handle on it,” he said. “One of the real challenges we’re all faced with in nanoscience is what’s going to break first. I wish I knew because I’d bet all my money on it and retire on an island somewhere.”

Still, if pressed, Madia would give the nod to nanomaterials as the most likely first area of widespread adoption and, therefore, near-term revenues.

“In recent decades information technology has often superceded materials as the hot button,” he said. “But that’s just a Johnny-come-lately phenomenon. If you’re going to make long-term money bets, I’d bet on materials again coming back.”

June 3, 2003 — Cabot Corp. of Boston has bought Albuquerque, N.M.-based Superior MicroPowders LLC, which is developing micro- and nanoparticle technologies for electronics, fuel cells, displays and other markets, according to a news release.

The cost was $16 million, most of which Cabot said will go to ongoing research and development. Superior has been working with several companies to commercialize products, the release said.

Cabot is a global specialty chemicals and materials company, with 4,500 employees in 23 countries. Late Tuesday, the company was trading at 29.50 on the New York Stock Exchange, down from Monday’s close of 29.65.

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June 2, 2003 — thinXXS Microtechnology sees the future in microstructured plastic.

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The two-year-old German company says that its microinjection process produces components with structural details smaller than a micron. That could translate into microsystems made out of plastics, which cost less and can be made in larger volumes than glass or silicon.

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The spinoff from the Mainz Institute for Microtechnology is lead by its general managers, Hans-Joachim Hartmann and Lutz Weber.

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The company, with sites in Mainz and the town of Zweibrücken, sells microscope slides with 96 wells for fluorescence microscopy, microplates with upwards of 1,536 wells and integrated lab-on-a-chip systems.

But the company’s flagship product is a low-energy-driven microdiaphragm pump, the XXS2000, now in the evaluation stage and slated for volume production this year. The pump fits into a matchbox and weighs less than a pencil, and can pump from several microliters to 3 milliliters of liquid per minute. According to Marketing Manager Thomas Stange, the pump has a wide variety of potential applications, from drug delivery to microlubrication, and can be used in devices as diverse as household appliances and fuel cells.

He said it is also one of the few micropumps that is ready for market. “You can find dozens of pumps on the Web or at trade shows, but just try to buy one,” he said. “Usually the ones you see out there are just prototypes.”

The company produces about 100 of its pumps per month, but expects to sell a million a year when automated production gets off the ground.

“We can get the costs very low if the volumes are high,” said thinXXS Sales Manager Robert Pischler. “The price will be so low, in fact, people will begin to think of the pumps as disposable. The future market will be products which can be disposed of. That’s only possible with plastics.”

Professor Klaus-Peter Kämper at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences, said that while silicon micropumps show fewer signs of fatigue in the long run, developments in plastics technology are bringing the stability and reliability of plastic pumps close to that of their silicon relatives.

“What’s also interesting for the medical field is that there is now a whole series of plastics that are biocompatible,” he said. “Silicon isn’t.”

He said the potential market is big and predicts that as soon as mass production gets going, prices will drop to $1 or $2 per pump.

“Reliability has often been a problem with micropumps,” he said. “But I think firms are on the verge of solving that and we should see the pumps being adopted in a fairly large way by industry within five years or so.”

ThinXXS got off the ground in 2001 with the help of three investors: PRICAP Venture Partners AG, tbs Technologie-Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mbH and the Wagnisfinanzierungsgesellschaft in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Their initial investment was $5.9 million, which might not sound like a lot, but sufficed for thinXXS because it had low capital needs. The company still uses the equipment and facilities of its parent, the Mainz Institute for Microtechnology.

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Company file: thinXXS Microtechnology
(last updated June 2, 2003)

Company
thinXXS Microtechnology

Headquarters

Production
Amerika Strasse 21
66482 Zweibrücken
Germany

Development
Wernher-von-Braun Strasse 9
55129 Mainz
Germany

History
Founded in April 2001, thinXXS is a spinoff from the Mainz Institute for Microtechnology and uses that organization’s facilities and equipment, as well as maintaining production facilities in Zweibrücken.

Industry
Microcomponent manufacturing

Employees
25

Small tech-related products and services
The company uses a microinjection molding process to create components (microplates and micropumps) with structural details of less than 1 micron. This may lower the cost of microsystems manufacturing, which historically has depended on glass and silicon, and improve biocompatibility with lab materials.

Management

  • Hans-Joachim Hartmann: co-managing director (Mainz)

  • Lutz Weber: co-managing director (Zweibrücken)

  • Thomas Stange: marketing manager

  • Robert Pischler: sales manager

    • Investment history
    thinXXS received initial funding of $5.9 million from PRICAP Venture Partners AG, tbs Technologie-Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mbH and the Wagnisfinanzierungsgesellschaft in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

    Selected strategic partners and customers
    thinXXS is partnering with Clemens GmbH, FRIZ Biochem GmbH, ibidi GmbH and the Fraunhofer Institute in an effort to create a “modular microfluidics construction kit” for the life sciences.

    Barriers to market
    As thinXXS grows, the company will need to create volume manufacturing methods that keep up with product demand while retaining a low per-unit cost.

    Selected competitors

  • Miniature Tool & Die Inc.

  • Micromold Inc.

  • Mimotec SA

  • Sansyu Precision HK Ltd.

    • Goals
    “Right now, our major goal is to spread the word on how customers can profit from our expertise. In the longer term we will work hard to make thinXXS the synonym for microstructured systems made of plastic.”

    Why they’re in small tech?
    “Microsystem technology has such a broad scope. You can have it in medical technology, in automotive, in household appliances, the possibilities are just so vast. And being a young company, where would you go? Where you can make a profit. We think we can make a profit here.”

    What keeps them up at night
    “If a customer came up to us and said, ‘I need a million pieces this year.’ Right now we don’t want to go at such a fast pace. We don’t want to grow before the market does, we want to grow with it.”

    Recent articles
    Are you going to Hannover Fair?
    German group seeks better microfluidics

    Contact

  • URL: www.thinxxs.de

  • Phone: 49 6332-80020

  • Fax: 49 6332-800222

    • — Research by Gretchen McNeely

    NEW YORK — Some threw strikes. Some were low and outside. But nine startups with major league dreams each got a shot at winning investor interest as part of NanoBusiness Spring’s Bootcamp for Entrepreneurs.

    Moderated by Ben Savage, an associate with private equity firm Wasserstein & Co. and Ari Ginsberg, director of the center for entrepreneurship at NYU’s Stern School of Business, “The Pitch” gave a lineup of young companies the chance to polish the 15 minute version of their business plan in front of an audience of potential investors.

    The pitches were as varied as the pitchers. Some were polished, professional and persuasive. Some were of the Ph.D.-with-a-dream-and-a-patent variety. But all were innovative.

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    Screwball: Chiral Technologies hopes to produce filters or modulators for optical networks from a patent on making optical fiber with a special nano-spiral twist in its core. CEO Dan Neugroschl also believes the company’s candy-striped fiber can be integrated with less expensive lasers to provide “twice the power at half the price.”

    Spitball In the morning session, Emanuel Barros, chief technology officer for two-month-old NanoMatrix, presented a cost-effective system that can cut or etch submicron structures using tiny jets of water. Barros, who left NASA’s Ames Research Center to start NanoMatrix, said the process was inspired by a kind of shrimp that stuns prey with powerful water jets.

    Whiskeyball: Yuval Avniel of MicroPowder Solutions described his company’s simple, intriguing method for creating thin films from two or more materials. By carefully alternating how different atoms are deposited on a surface, Avniel said, the process could allow scientists to “put atoms together like Lego blocks.” It could, he said, be applied to create multifunctional coatings that might be both wear-resistant and electrically conducting. He also envisioned the process being used to create nanoscale fuel cells, filters or wires.

    Avniel said the technology has been developed on something less than a shoestring. “My colleague in Belarus agreed to make our samples in exchange for a case of Johnny Walker,” he said. He’s now looking for strategic partners and seed capital.

    Curveball: Jayesh Doshi, chief executive and founder of eSpin Technologies in Chattanooga, Tenn., is looking for $3 million in funding to enable his company to rapidly and dramatically increase its production of nanofibers. Doshi said eSpin, founded in 1999, already has more than 30 customers, including the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, NASA and TRW.

    The company’s nanofibers, which can be “electrospun” from a variety of materials, including carbon and nylon, could provide superior performance in automotive air, oil and gas filters. For commercial production of nanofiber air filters, Doshi said, eSpin has to ramp up to produce eight million yards of material.

    Other nanofiber applications in eSpin’s arsenal: use in ultracapacitors for energy storage, filtering blood, viruses and biomolecules, creating strong, lightweight materials.

    Buckyball: Like many scientific discoveries, Luna nanoMaterials’ metal-filled buckyballs, soccer-ball shaped carbon molecules filled with three metallic ions and a nitrogen atom, were a happy accident.

    As CEO Kent Murphy explains, Harry Dorn’s team at Virginia Tech were trying to make “regular” buckyballs when a bit of air leaked into the reactor. The error lead to a whole new class of materials that the company calls Trimetaspheres. The buckyballs don’t break down in the presence of oxygen and can withstand heat up to 300 degrees Celsius, he said.

    Now it is looking to produce them commercially as a highly effective contrast agent that could make MRI images and the diagnoses derived from them significantly better.

    Murphy said that the buckyballs are 50 times better than the current best-selling contrast agent, called Magnevist, which controls more than 60 percent of the billion-dollar market for MRI contrast agents. What’s more, Magnevist’s patent is about to expire. Murphy also contends that Luna’s agent could make MRIs more useful and less expensive by requiring patients to ingest less of a contrast agents and allowing smaller magnets to be used in MRI machines.

    The company has done tests in small animals and is looking to raise $7 million the get started on toxicity studies before moving to phase 1 clinical trials in humans. Ultimately, Murphy said, the company’s exit strategy is to be acquired.

    So how did umpire/moderator Ben Savage see the game. “It’s well known that venture capitalists don’t like to fund science projects,” he observed. Savage thought that one pitcher, BigBangwidth, a company based in Edmonton, Alberta, which aims to produce local network devices that offer “ethernet on steroids” via nanoelectronics, had commercial promise.

    But overall, he has an investor’s cautious, risk/reward driven perspective on small tech. “Many of these markets and almost all of these technologies are uncertain,” he said.

    He also noticed that while all nine companies that participated in The Pitch had some degree of “smallness” about their technologies, they were in a wider range of business sectors.

    Echoing a theme heard throughout the conference, Savage noted that “nanotechnology is not an industry, but a set of technologies spanning a wide range of businesses.” To assess small tech-powered startups, investors have to look at them not through nano-tinted glasses, but with expertise in whatever sector a new company may be looking to enter.

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    May 21, 2003 — Feature-rich portable devices are getting hungry for more and more power. So, the race is on to meet the demands of energy-sapping digital multimedia through portable, powerful micro fuel cells (MFCs) that outlast rechargeable batteries. The companies that succeed have a billion-dollar market waiting for them.

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    The problem is, there are so many business and technology barriers in their way, MFCs will probably remain niche products for the next several years.

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    According to David Redstone, editor of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Investor, no firm has demonstrated a commercial prototype with sufficient power in a small enough package that can fit inside a notebook computer, much less a mobile phone. Redstone said only one MFC maker, Medis Technologies Ltd., has reported achieving a “volumetric energy density” — or the ratio of energy output to its volume — that surpasses lithium ion batteries.

    Nonetheless, MFC companies are attracting attention. In February, President Bush made a call on a mobile phone powered by a prototype from MTI MicroFuel Cells Inc. The president actually held the power pack in one hand, the phone in the other, with the two connected by a cable.

    But early market entry won’t be found in the West Wing. It will happen first in more industrial settings, where it’s critical that wireless devices can be charged instantly and run longer. MTI Micro said it would integrate MFCs into one of Intermec Technologies Corp.’s industrial wireless hand-held devices sometime in 2004, but would not say what size the fuel cell would be.

    Portable power generation in remote locations will likely be another early market. New York-based Medis Technologies is building a fuel cell auxiliary charger to power a military PDA being developed by General Dynamics. Medis is aiming for commercial production in 2004. Redstone projects that Medis’ technology will cost between $2.50 and $3.50 a watt, vs. $5 a watt for lithium ion rechargeable batteries.

    Jim Balcom, president of PolyFuel Inc., an Intel-funded startup that makes the critical membrane component for micro fuel cells, said that a prototype debuted in a laptop at the Intel Developers Conference in February. Balcom said the improved performance of PolyFuel’s membrane over a rival made by DuPont should help MFC makers reduce the size of systems.

    Atakan Ozbek, director of energy research with Allied Business Intelligence Inc. and author of a new report on micro fuel cells, said his firm is less bullish on the near-term future for MFCs than it was three years ago — in part because some companies have delayed their prototypes. Nevertheless, Ozbek’s report predicts that the market for micro fuel cells will grow from a few commercial products in 2004 to 50 million units in 2010.

    In the next two years, Ozbek said, MFC makers will have to solve technical problems before they can integrate them with larger devices — challenges that larger companies are better equipped to solve. That’s why Toshiba, Samsung, Hitachi, Motorola and NEC may come to dominate the fuel cell market.

    Most analysts believe MFCs and rechargeable batteries will end up operating together to meet the sudden spike in power demands. Future small tech innovations in materials and microsystems may help shrink micro fuel cells to the sizes and power densities they need to reach. NEC is developing fuel cell electrodes that employ “nanohorns,” a variant of carbon nanotubes, to improve performance, and reports it will begin shipping fuel cells for laptops in 2004.

    Neah Power Systems Inc. has developed technology based on microscopic channels machined into a cube of silicon and lined with catalytic nanoparticles. Methanol fuel and hydrogen peroxide interact to produce electricity. “Just as Wi-Fi is cutting the cord to Ethernet connections, we’re aiming to help sever ties to the AC power outlet,” said Gregg Makuch, Neah’s marketing director.

    The ultimate question for competitors in the MFC market is when. “Medis should be commercial in two years,” said Redstone. “Neah could easily be six years away.”

    April 16, 2003 – GSI Creos Corp. of Japan has developed metal-supported catalysts using a carbon nanofiber that could be used in electrodes for fuel cells, according to the Jiji Press English News Service.

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    The new catalysts are cheaper to make because they require less platinum in their manufacturing process, the report said. GSI’s nanotech team developed the catalysts with Shinshu University Professor Morinobu Endo, according to the report.

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    April 14, 2003 — A Chattanooga, Tenn., company is putting a new spin on an old manufacturing technique.

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    ESpin Technologies Inc. wants to be a major producer of nanofibers for the filtration and other industries. It uses a process known as electrospinning, which combines electrostatics, polymer sciences, fluid mechanics and engineering. Electrospinning was first used in the textile industry during the mid-1930s, but its application in other industries has been limited.

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    But eSpin is not repeating what other companies have done. Armed with a $2 million federal grant from the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), it’s developing a special high-speed device to overcome two traditional barriers to electrospinning: high production costs and low output of material. “The real success will come when we can successfully commercialize technology to produce fiber economically,” said Jayesh Doshi, eSpin’s president and chief executive.

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    Nanofibers are up to 100 times smaller in diameter than conventional textile fabrics. Experts say that the smaller size translates into significant cost and performance improvements. Here’s how electrospinning works: A high voltage is applied to a thin tube that contains a polymer solution. The voltage ejects a continuous stream of liquid, which is then split into very fine jets of fluid. The evaporating solvent creates fibers that are collected and formed into layers, or nanofiber mats.

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    eSpin has successfully commercialized mats of electrospun fiber 50 to 100 nanometers in diameter. Its nanofibers are used to develop filters for fuel cells, heating and air conditioning systems, and for aerospace and automotive parts. Other possible uses include cosmetics, paint additives and medical devices.

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    Company sales approached $1 million in 2002, said Doshi. He declined to identify client companies, saying only that they include some of the “bigger players” in the filtration industry.

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    eSpin produces about 10,000 yards of nanofiber per day — far below the needs of major filtration companies. “We have one customer that would like to have 50 million square yards a year. That’s (only) one customer, and there are hundreds of filter companies,” Doshi said.

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    The fiber sales have helped eSpin invest money in its new machine, which could be ready for full-scale production as early as this year.

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    The payoff could be worth it. According to the McIlvaine Co., a Northfield, Ill., market research firm, the global market for filtration media could reach $75 billion by 2020.

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    The large surface area of nanofibers — about 100 times smaller in diameter than conventional textile fibers — offer significant performance advantages, experts say. However, no commercial processes exist for affordably making nanofibers in quantities sufficient for large-scale manufacturing.

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    “Nanofibers never really became fabrics,” said Darrell Reneker, a professor of polymer science at the University of Akron in Ohio. “It costs more to make them, so you really have to want surface area, which is what you buy when you make nanofibers: surface area per unit mass.”

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    Doshi said eSpin’s proprietary device could produce large volumes of nanofibers at lower cost than existing technologies allow. As the technology matures, eSpin expects sales to the filtration industry to account for about $20 million annually within five to seven years.

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    “We are hoping to have several (filtration) products developed, and also to perfect the art of making those products,” said Doshi. “Then it will be a matter of putting things together for manufacturing in large-scale quantities.”

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    Large filtration companies could emerge as competitors, though. Donaldson Co., a huge filtration system maker in Minneapolis, has patented nanofibers made using an electrospinning process.

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    eSpin, which is self-funded, has 11 full-time employees, and expects to move soon from the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce’s Business Development Center. Doshi said the company will add additional staff once its new manufacturing device is ready for production.

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    Company file: eSpin Technologies Inc.
    (last updated April 14, 2003)

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    Company

    eSpin Technologies Inc.

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    Headquarters

    100 Cherokee Blvd, Suite 325

    Chattanooga, Tenn., 37405

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    History

    eSpin was founded in 1999 by Jayesh Doshi, who had previously worked at DuPont in fiber-spinning research.

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    Industry

    Filtration tools

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    Employees

    11

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    Small tech-related products and services

    eSpin develops polymeric nanofibers (50-100 nanometers) used for filtration product research and development. Other markets include heating, ventilating and air conditioning; the automotive/aerospace sector; energy; medical devices; and cosmetics. The fibers, created from materials such as carbon and nylon, are developed using a process called electrospinning, which helps increase output and lower production costs.

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    Management

  • Jayesh Doshi: president and chief executive officer
  • Parkash Kunda: business development director

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    Revenues

    Approximately $1 million in 2002. The company projects revenues of $20 million in five to seven years.

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    Selected customers

  • U.S. Defense and Energy departments
  • NASA
  • TRW

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    Investment history

    eSpin was the first Tennessee-based company to win a federal Advanced Technology Program grant, receiving a $2 million award in fall 2002. Otherwise, the company has been funded by its management.

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    Barriers to market

    Because eSpin services major players in the filtration industry, it will need to ramp up its production capabilities to meet clients’ high-volume needs. This will be difficult due to a lack of affordable large-scale production processes.

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    Competitors

  • Applied Sciences Inc.
  • Catalytic Materials LLC
  • Donaldson Company Inc.

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    Goals

    Produce and sell electrospun nanofibers for research while completing development of a platform technology — a high-speed device that could improve output and reduce manufacturing costs for new nanofibers.

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    Why they’re in small tech

    To revolutionize a 70-year-old manufacturing process by going to a “smaller level.”

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    What keeps them up at night

    Mitigating the risks associated with the solvents and the high voltage. “You might have a bright idea, bright product and bright investors standing behind you — go and find an insurance company that wants to support you,” said Jayesh Doshi, eSpin’s president and chief executive.

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    Recent news

    Chattanooga-based nanotech firm wins $2 million grant

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    Contact

  • URL: www.nanospin.com
  • Phone: 423-267-NANO (6266)
  • Fax: 423-267-6265
  • E-mail: [email protected]

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    — Research by Gretchen McNeely