Category Archives: Energy Storage

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Nov. 6, 2003 — The U.S. Senate is close to giving its long-awaited approval to a bill that would give nanotechnology a permanent home in the federal government, but passage is being held up in backroom debates over a proposed center to study societal and ethical issues.

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Sources say disagreements, including whether such a center would hinder the emerging industry’s progress, should be resolved soon.

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The 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act would designate more than $2 billion to nanotech research and development during the next three years and set up a formal structure for coordination of research across agencies. It also would authorize a study of the emerging technology’s potential societal and ethical effects by establishing a center for societal, ethical and other issues.

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The proposed national nano ethics center excites David Berube, a communications professor and department head at the University of South Carolina, which recently received two related National Science Foundation (NSF) grants. If the government designates the university as the ethics center’s permanent home, Berube would be its manager.

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He said that such a center would ensure objectivity and substance. “The truth is, if we don’t have this nano center … a bunch of public relations firms are going to take up the mantle of this,” he said.

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Berube said getting the contract, worth around $25 million over five years, would greatly expand the efforts he and his colleagues have already begun. The university has received two related grants; the latest, announced in August, brings in more than $1 million from the NSF to study societal and ethical issues surrounding nanotechnology.

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“One of the beauties of this whole bill is it creates a freestanding bureaucracy. Once you establish (that), … it develops a life of its own,” he said. “The (five-year time frame) provides a degree of permanence you don’t normally see in a lot of projects funded by the federal government.”

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Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., first introduced a nanotech bill last year in the Senate. The Commerce Committee supported it, but the full Senate never acted before the 107th Congress adjourned. It was again introduced earlier this year by Sen. George Allen, R.-Va., who took over from Wyden as chairman of the Senate Science, Technology and Space subcommittee.

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House and Senate leaders have worked to ensure the language is acceptable to both bodies. The compromise bill, once passed by the Senate, must go back to the House for a vote before reaching President Bush’s desk for his expected signature.

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Chris Fitzgerald, Wyden’s press secretary, described the private negotiations as “typical maintenance” necessary as a bill is prepared for the Senate floor.

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“Sen. Wyden understands nanotech’s importance to the future economy,” he said. “He’s very pleased to see us so close to getting it signed into law.”

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Mark Modzelewski, executive director of the New York-based trade group NanoBusiness Alliance, said the holdup is a result of the “usual stuff” that comes up before a vote.

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“At the last minute, there certainly are a lot of members who aren’t completely engaged in the discussion for a variety of reasons,” he said. “They might try to offer up some new ideas, try to tweak it. … So much of it’s worked out ahead of time.”

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Mike Roco, director of the National Nanotechnology Initiative and senior nanotech adviser for the NSF, said much of the effort and coordination among agencies described in the bill has been under way for a while. But he sees the legislation more as a symbolic victory of nano’s impact and potential.

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“The main role of the bill is in fact this recognition of the field and its importance,” Roco said. After the bill’s passage, he said, nanotechnology would be “recognized in an official document by the Congress … as a key technology for the U.S. future.”

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He said the challenge now comes in setting priorities in nanotech’s key areas as they move from basic concepts to technological innovation and application. The key areas today are materials, pharmaceuticals, electronics and chemicals. But emerging areas, such as medicine, energy conversion and environmental implications, also demand dollars. Roco said there is not enough money to fund all sectors simultaneously.

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“This will be a very difficult task. However, this is a good situation to be in — to have many good projects,” he said. “It’s a good situation to be recognized as a top priority.”

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Nov. 5, 2003 — Nanotechnology startup Optiva Inc., is not only a cash magnet, but it’s also a member of a new breed of technology company, where the brains and innovation are in Russia, but the company is headquartered in the United States, Europe or East Asia.

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“It is world-class technology. Remember that it was the Russian Soyuz that rescued the NASA space station crew,” points out Jean Charles Herpeux, chief executive of ACOL Technology, a Swiss/Russian manufacturer of high brightness light emitting diodes (HB-LEDs).

Typical Russian research spinoff technologies are fuel cells, sensors that work in extreme conditions, nanopowders and high-power compact microscopes. Examples include NT-MDT, a manufacturer of atomic force and scanning probe microscopes, and one-year-old Independent Power Technologies, a manufacturer of advanced fuel cell systems.

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Optiva’s founder is Pavel Lazarev, a sixty-something, gregarious Russian who has raised more than $40 million for his firm’s innovative and surprisingly simple thin-film technology. He’s the former head of MDT, an atomic force microscope company in Moscow.

Despite having a large number of patents and scientific papers to his name, Lazarev is an entrepreneur. Don’t call him a researcher. He uses phrases like, “the best founders are dead founders,” showing he understands the thinking of the venture capital crowd. Currently, Optiva’s shareholders are entertaining the first bids from interested buyers.

Esther Dyson, an early investor in Russian technology firms, says that Russia doesn’t really need VC money; it needs management savvy. People like Lazarev are rare.

That means that investors who wish to be successful have to take a hands-on approach. UK-based Flintstone PLC is trying the incubator model. It seeks chemical and surface technology deals that are close to being ripe for the market. It then gives the inventors shares in a new UK-based company, which takes over all the intellectual property.

It is a model that worked well for Flintstone’s founder Ian Woodcock’s first Russian deal. He ended up selling Sterilox Technologies Inc., a maker of nontoxic sterilizations systems to investors in 2000 for an undisclosed sum. Woodcok decided to repeat the process, forming Flintstone as the incubation vehicle.

Researchers are paid a salary and key members of the team move to the United Kingdom. But not everyone agrees that moving Russian scientists to Great Britain is the best method to build value in an early stage company.

“My issue with the Flintstone model is that it removes one of the major benefits of Russian tech — the relatively low cost,” said a Moscow-based private equity investor. “Employee and infrastructure prices are lower here than in the UK.”

It also adds more risk: homesickness, culture shock and the like.

Marie Trexler, who heads Intel Capital in Eastern Europe and Russia, agrees that it is better to keep R&D teams in Russia due to the savings to be achieved.

Even Flintstone might be reconsidering its model. “Getting visas and traveling to Moscow is not as difficult as it once was,” says David Chestnutt, Flintstone’s CEO. In addition, one of its portfolio firms, a company that had found a way to make super-rechargeable batteries, lost its Russian chief scientist when he suddenly resigned and returned to Russia.

The two companies in the Flintstone portfolio closest to profitability are Hardide and Keronite. Hardide’s key researcher was the leading expert in chemical vapor deposition technologies at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an important space research center in Russia.

Keronite is a startup developing a surface treatment to boost the hardness of aluminum and magnesium to the level of steel. Magnesium is a material cherished for its lightness and luxe look compared to plastic, but it is soft and susceptible to corrosion and wear.

Its process has actually been around for decades, but it took Russian perseverance and ingenuity, in the form of a Moscow State University researcher, Alexander Shatrov, to be able to run the process using a reasonable about of energy.

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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. 15, 2003 – Researchers are applying the principles of green chemistry — using fewer or alternative materials for more efficient, eco-friendly results — and the advantages of nanotechnology and microsystems to “do things green from the get go.”

By cutting or eliminating waste from manufacturing processes and fostering better materials, green chemistry and nanotechnology intersect to allow more efficient production, the effective breaking down of hazardous material, and alternatives to solvents or high temperatures that can damage the environment, according to researchers such as University of Oregon’s James Hutchison, associate professor of chemistry and director of the Materials Science Institute.

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“It became pretty obvious that there are a lot of ways nano can be important for the environment,” Hutchison says of his work in both green chemistry and nanoscience.

Hutchison, the University of Oregon and its partnership with Oregon State University are working to employ the advantages of nanotechnology and microsystems to “do things green from the get go, as opposed to greening it after the fact,” he says.

Hutchison says nanoscience will most likely produce environmental benefits first in the areas of fuel cells and in microelectronics, where small has already succeeded in benefiting the Earth to some degree.

“There have been changes to the electronics industry to make it greener,” Hutchison says.

He also refers to the semiconductor industry and a greener design approach made possible by nanoscience, which is the basis of a molecularly integrated circuit.

“It used to be a block of materials and chiseling it down,” Hutchison says. “By taking a bottom-up, building block approach, you have less waste. The nanoscience revolution will help us make better materials.”

Sathyaraj Radhakrishnan, an analyst for Frost and Sullivan’s Technical Insights, sees that approach taking off and cutting down on waste and chemical storage in semiconductor manufacturing.

“In a few years we will see the total elimination of chemicals that are used to chip away materials used in the fabrication of integrated circuit chips, which would in turn eliminate wastage and storage of these chemicals in large storage tanks,” says Radhakrishnan.

The analyst also referred to other green nanotech applications near commercialization: nanosensors and nanoscale coatings to replace thicker, more wasteful polymer coatings that prevent corrosion; nanosensors for detection of aquatic toxins; nanoscale biopolymers for improved decontamination and recycling of heavy metals; nanostructured metals that break down hazardous organics at room temperature; smart particles for environmental monitoring and purification; nanoparticles as a novel photocatalyst for solar applications; and other nano-based environmental catalysts.

Working with University of Oregon to combine nanotechnology and micro-scale devices, Oregon State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are also finding green gains through small tech.

OSU associate professor and co-director of PNNL’s Microproducts Breakthrough Institute Kevin Drost says the green chemistry goals of minimized materials for production also can be attained by combining nanoscale functionality and microscale devices.

“We believe we can do many more times yield with the production of nanoscale features,” Drost says. “We can get a 100 or 1,000 factor more per unit of input because we have a higher degree of control.”

With microscale control of factors such as temperature and chemistry, Drost explains that applications including improved batch production, microscale reactors and more energy efficient power systems all represent classic applications of green chemistry and technology.

Drost points to the combination of Oregon’s thin thermoelectric generator (TEG) and Oregon State’s high-flux combustion system and heat exchange as an example of an environmentally beneficial application of nanotech and microdevices.

“We think the combination is a perfect fit and a desirable combination for portable power supplies,” says Drost, who adds microscale combusters are already in commercial use.

PNNL’s Landis Kannberg, co-director of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, says the micro-size heat exchanger is closest to commercialization and refers to improved performance as an environmental gain.

“The more you improve performance, the more it helps in terms of any waste generated as well,” he says, calling microtechnology the logical vehicle to realize potential benefits of nanotechnology.

Drost also notes the environmental impact of shipping hazardous materials can be avoided using technologies and systems that allow production when and where it is needed.

“If there was a problem the solution is you make a microscale system that produces the nanosystems right where you need them, when you need them,” Drost says. “We’re working on just-in-time nanosystem production models.”

While environmental groups such as Greenpeace concede the potential benefits of nanotechnology, they also point to non-technical challenges.

“Whether these beneficial applications are developed and deployed effectively are governed by issues that go beyond the technology itself,” says Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr.

“Cleaner production processes will find it hard to be developed and deployed when it is cheap to pollute. Solar power will not be developed if R&D money goes into using fossil fuels more efficiently.”

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Sept. 19, 2003 — It is vital that the electric grid of the country be modernized if we are to have any hope of preventing future disruptions in the electricity supply like those just experienced in the Northeast, Midwest and Canada. And next time, it could be far worse than Aug. 14.

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The country’s political and especially economic well-being depends upon a reliable energy infrastructure. But the failure detection and remediation system of the national grid has major flaws and weaknesses beyond what we saw in August. The system was designed 50 years ago to automatically shut down at any sign of such a power surge.

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Who will build the smart grid of the future? How is the country to meet future electricity demand, which is projected to grow by 20 percent by 2020, while maintaining reliability, if the current system is stressed to its limits?

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Modern computer sensing, planning and control software could have prevented August’s shutdown in the first place by diverting power from the wave front using what are called smart power controllers. These employ computer control of thyristors, the electric grid’s equivalent of transistors and giant capacitors, to divert power from troubling congestion spots to underutilized grid lines — much as the Internet responds to failures and attacks with instantaneous response.

Widespread use of such software and hardware must be supplemented with far more advanced breakthroughs such as nanotechnologies that could revolutionize the capacity of the transmission wires themselves. New quantum wires made of carbon nanotube fibers must be developed and tested, in addition to superconductors and high-voltage DC lines. Nanotechnologies also offer the possibility for vast new electrical energy storage capacity that must be tested and connected into the smart grid.

Such quantum wires could have the electrical conductivity of copper, but at a sixth of the weight. Unlike today’s transmission cables, they wouldn’t sag dangerously into trees because of the nanotubes’ tensile strength. Places once too remote for power plants could become reachable, adding to the grid’s capacity. Energy also could be harvested from sources such as solar farms built in deserts around the world.

Texas is in a position to become the first to test nano and other advanced technologies related to transmission wires, environmental remediation, new generation technologies and other developments we can’t even imagine now related to the smart grid of the future. It has been a leader in electric grid development for 50 years, with its Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The state is also unique in that its electric grid is largely self-contained, with only limited DC interconnections to Mexico, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

The Texas Energy Center was created with assistance from the Texas Legislature to lead in energy innovation. The center and the isolated ERCOT grid make Texas the ideal location to develop and test the smart grid of the future.

The Texas Energy Center, Columbia University and several Texas universities with nanotechnology initiatives are working with ERCOT and the state power industry to create a research and development test bed for the smart grid. Our plan is to create and provide a national test bed in Texas for software and hardware tools that will use simulations and learning to plan for modernization, prevention of cascading failures, and response and remediation in case of attacks from both natural and man-made events.

Working together, the utilities, independent system operators and research institutions can assume a leadership role in the task of modernizing this essential electricity grid.

A version of this column appeared on Aug. 19 in the Houston Chronicle.

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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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Aug. 19, 2003 — Even as the energy industry struggles to understand why last week’s massive eight-state blackout occurred, experts are examining ways in which small tech could help prevent it from happening again. And they’re finding at least one new way to make the grid run more efficiently: microsensors.

Not only more efficiently, but “smarter.”

The MEMS-based systems can do that by circulating up-to-date information about what’s going on within the power systems, said John Stringer, technical director at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utilities consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif.

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“The sensor and the system that produces the corrections have to be closely integrated,” Stringer said. “That’s what we mean when we say the system has to be smarter.”

He and his EPRI colleague Arun Mehta, manager of fuels technology, are compiling their research into microsystems and nanotech for the energy grid. “The electric industry has not started to look at this in a way they should,” Stringer said.

“There are more and more companies talking about power lines and transmission, in terms of MEMS technologies,” said Marlene Bourne, senior MEMS analyst with In-Stat/MDR.

“Really, this is all first-generation. It’s good ideas, and companies who are supplying sensors are interested in building this wireless-sensing infrastructure into the field. The electricity companies seem to be really interested.”

At the same time, the federal government is expected to react to the blackout by pouring new money into research and development that will buttress the grid. Influential policymakers like Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee; Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., House energy subcommittee chairwoman; presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.; and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger have all touted nanotechnology as a possible energy savior.

And Rice University professor and Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley spends a lot of time talking to people in Washington about the intersections of energy, nanotechnology and the federal government. He and others are pushing for a federal commitment of billions of dollars to develop nanotech energy applications.

Among the solutions Smalley advocates for enhancing the electrical grid is what he calls quantum wires to replace today’s high-voltage transmission cables. Quantum wires are nanotube fibers that have the electrical conductivity of copper wire with a fraction of the weight.

Such wires would increase the capacity of the grid by allowing the energy industry to harvest electricity from alternate sources such as solar concentrators built in remote Western deserts. “That’s real estate that doesn’t do squat but it is blessed with solar (power),” Smalley said.

He also argues nanotechnology will play a role in the fuel cells and energy storage systems needed to develop smart local power networks. A grid based on local networks would be immune from massive outages because it would generate and store energy locally but have the capability of shipping or receiving it to other networks when needed.

If the topic wasn’t exactly hot before last Thursday, the blackouts will make it warmer in Washington.

At least one utility has already started exploring small tech. Workers at Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), a $26 billion electric utility in New Jersey, confront a problem every day: sparks in transformers that can destroy the $2 million machines and even start fires that level entire power stations. It’s a problem with which all electric utilities wrestle.

The utility teamed up with the New Jersey Institute of Technology to develop a MEMS acoustic sensor that could be placed directly into transformers’ oil. The sensor is an ear-like probe that can listen for the sounds of sparks, said Harry Roman, a PSEG technology development and transfer consultant. The collaboration has led to a microsensor, still being tested, that is attuned to the sounds sparks make and can pinpoint their location.

The company and university are also working on sensors that will alert engineers to the movements of underground cables, as well as a “smart splice,” a sensor attached by helicopter to splices in high-voltage transmission lines that will transmit data to engineers. It’s important that engineers understand what’s going on with the splices before they break, shutting down power and dropping power lines hundreds of feet to the ground.

“In the movie ‘Twister,’ they are trying to get the tornado to suck up all of these radio transmitters so they can map the interior of a tornado,” Roman said. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to get these sensors distributed around our system so we can know more intelligently what is going on.

“The question is,” he added, “can we go beyond the fence, go onto the pole lines, into the lines themselves, the cables. It’s like looking at the utility infrastructure as a skeleton and trying to stretch an intelligent skin over it. The nerves are the microsensors. They will be the first line of information to bring the data into us.

Outside of sensors, solar cells might also have a near-term impact on the industry. They could aid in distributed generation — a growing trend in which people use devices to either supplant or complement the power they get from the grid. The more distributed the generation, the less dependent users are on the grid.

Current work at companies like Nanosys Inc. in California and Konarka Technologies in Massachusetts will lead to cheaper, versatile, flexible and more efficient solar cells.

Nanosys has scheduled a 2006 release for solar cells integrated into roof shingles that produce energy at a cost of about $1 a watt, making solar power comparable with fossil fuels, said Stephen Empedocles, the company’s co-founder and director of business development.

At Konarka, solar cells are composed of nanometer-scale crystals of semiconductor covered with light-absorbing dye. The dye oxidizes, electrons travel through a wire that powers the electronic device, and then the electron re-enters the cell, getting absorbed by an electrolyte solution.

As the technology becomes more mature and efficient, smart power companies will invest in discovering ways to use it to, as Konarka President Bill Beckenbaugh said, “put power back into the grid.”

Small Times Features Editor Candace Stuart contributed to this report.

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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