Category Archives: Energy Storage

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Aug. 9, 2002 — MTI MicroFuel Cells Inc., based in Albany, N.Y., has shrunk its prototype powerpack to smaller than a deck of cards and will begin focusing on development and field testing commercial versions of the tiny fuel cells in 2003.

William Acker, chief executive, said that the company has cut the size of the device in half by integrating the fuel cell with the microfluidic plumbing that controls the methanol fuel. The new model also eliminates the need to route water from one side of the fuel cell’s membrane to the other, and has reduced cost by eliminating the need for several tiny pumps and valves.

“We’ve reached our third prototype stage two months ahead of time, and are getting into the size range where we need to be for commercial applications,” he said. “We’ve now got a simpler system that is integrated onto a laminated circuit board and can run on concentrated fuel of 40 percent methanol.” Aker said that the device has also been tested in the lab running on an 80 percent methanol fuel mixture.

Aker said the latest prototype has a slightly greater energy capacity — .24 watts per cubic centimeter of fuel — than the previous version unveiled 10 months ago.

And with last week’s appointment of a Alan Soucy as chief operating officer, Aker said, the company will begin building relationships with battery companies, cell phone and PDA makers as well as other potential partners for commercial distribution in 2004.

— Jack Mason

Aug. 8, 2002 — An activist organization is calling for a moratorium on the manufacture of all nanomaterials until U.S. federal regulatory agencies have tested the products and concluded they won’t harm the environment.

Nanomaterials have not been properly assessed by federal regulators, charged the ETC Group, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The organization, which has largely focused on biotechnology for the past 20 years, recently published an eight-page critique called, “No Small Matter! Nanotech Particles Penetrate Living Cells and Accumulate in Animal Organs.”

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“We’ve been astonished at the swarm of people who have gone to pull down that document, from companies and regulatory agencies,” said Pat Mooney, executive director of the organization.

Ken Lyon, president of Altair Nanomaterials Inc. in Reno, Nev., said inquiries into health and environmental matters in nanotechnology are healthy and welcome. But, he said, the report’s premise is flawed because it isn’t grounded in science.

“Doing this using a scare method, without backing up the science, isn’t the way to get responsible results,” he said.

Altair is one of several companies the report singles out. The company uses titanium dioxide nanoparticles for applications in batteries and fuel cells.

Mooney said the European Parliament in Brussels has asked the ETC Group to give briefings on nanotechnology this fall. The Christian Democrat Party and the Green Party are particularly interested in airing nanotech issues, he said. The organization will be at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug. 26-Sept. 4 to hold seminars on nanotechnology.

Interest in slowing down nanotechnology manufacturing is “moving much faster than biotechnology did,” he said. “We’ve gotten to the point that within five years, nanotechnology will be as much of an issue for environmental groups and others as biotechnology is today.”

He said the scientific community is responding in a similar fashion: “Everything is fine, there are no problems, this is the best thing since sliced bread,” he said. “It’s also an industry that, like biotechnology in the late 1970s and 1980s, was not well organized.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is, in fact, examining nanomaterials. The agency for the past two years has offered grants to researchers studying potential environmental problems associated with nanotechnology, as well as ways in which nanotechnology could be used to improve the environment. The agency has held workshops and expects to dedicate an increasingly larger chunk of its energy to nanoscience.

Mooney, however, said he believes the agency isn’t moving fast enough, or going far enough, in its scrutiny of nanomaterials manufacturing.

The ETC Group isn’t doing the environment any favors by trying to halt the manufacture of nanomaterials, said Kevin Ausman, executive director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University. Researchers at the center were quoted in the ETC Group paper, but Ausman said the quotes were taken out of context and “put into a political agenda.”

“If the stance taken by environmental activists is that these things are being investigated and so we need to put a moratorium on applications, then that will convince scientists to not be proactive,” he said. “That’s not what the environmentalists want, that’s not what industry wants. That’s not what anybody wants. What we need to have is a side-by-side development of applications and investigations of environmental applications, one informing the other as they progress, coupled with science and social policy.”

Scientists at the Rice center are doing some of the only research into nanotechnology and the environment. They hope that by unearthing and addressing potential environmental problems as they arise, the nanotechnology industry won’t stumble as dramatically as the biotechnology industry did, especially in agribusiness.

Ausman largely dismissed the ETC Group’s paper as being unhinged from science and lacking rigor. He said the paper makes a major “leap in logic” when it concludes that because nanomaterials have unique properties, they will therefore have unique “interactions with biological systems that could be negative.”

“Yes nanomaterials are very different from other materials, but that determines things like optical properties or electronic properties,” Ausman said. “There is not necessarily a direct connection between those properties and biological activity.”

Nanomaterials are defined by size, instead of chemistry or biological activity, he said. For now, researchers don’t know which nanomaterials are going to be prominent in applications. If the research community is forced to wait for environmental implication studies to take place before applications are developed, then applications will never get off the ground, he said.

The paper does mark an early salvo from an environmental group working to thwart nanotechnology manufacturing. Ausman said he expects more.

“I’m not incredibly worried about this yet, about having Greenpeace coming down on us, because we don’t have large-scale applications yet,” he said.

“Once the science has reached that point, and once the applications are developed to make it worth it economically, at that point I think we’ll be hearing a lot more from whatever environmental activist groups that are out there. Our goal for the center is to be ready, as those applications are developed, to be able to answer those questions.”

Aug. 6, 2002 — Patent filings on carbon nanotubes are keeping pace proportionately with the growing number of academic papers published on nanotubes, according to a review in this week’s journal Science.

That suggests industry’s interest in the versatile molecule is increasing steadily. While patenting doesn’t ensure commercialization, it certainly improves its chances, the lead

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Science magazine chart
Nanotube patents have been filed in these applications.
author said.

“The past is often a good way to predict the future,” said Ray Baughman, director of the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas and a carbon nanotube researcher. “There is a commonality in the way technology evolves.”

Baughman wrote the review with colleagues Anvar Zakhidov, a physicist at UT-Dallas and a member of the institute, and Walt de Heer, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The review details the latest findings on nanotube properties and limitations, plus their potential applications and existing products.

The publishing and patenting results, while only a segment of the overall review, are significant because they foreshadow economic growth. Economists see publishing and patenting as indicators of scientific activity and its transfer into industry. Some economists argue that innovation based on scientific and technological discoveries gives nations a competitive edge and fuels prosperity.

Carbon nanotubes, first identified in 1991, offer a number of attractive properties. They form as either single tubes (single-wall carbon nanotubes) or tubes within tubes (multiwall carbon nanotubes). They are much stronger than steel at a fraction of its weight, thermally and electrically conductive — or in some cases semiconductors — and are biocompatible. Recent research shows they have optical properties, too; they fluoresce in the near-infrared spectrum.

Their potential applications include strong, lightweight materials, energy storage and energy conversion devices, electronics, sensors and field emission sources for flat panel displays and cathodes. The latter two applications are based on nanotubes’ ability to release large numbers of electrons from their tips when a voltage is applied. As Baughman writes in the review, some applications are already being commercialized while others still face a variety of challenges.

The researchers found about 1,500 scientific papers were published in 2001, up from about 1,100 in 2000 and about 700 in 1999. Patent filings and issuances totaled more than 200 in 2001, about 120 in 2000 and about 50 in 1999. The steady growth kicked in after 1993, the year two research groups unveiled techniques for producing research quantities of nanotubes.

The majority of filings and issuances — 41 percent — cover the synthesis and processing of tubes, according to the team’s analysis. But two applications already being commercialized showed strong patenting activity. Inventions dealing with carbon nanotubes and electron emission (displays, etc.) garnered 25 percent of the filings, while composites chalked up another 9 percent. The remainder went to batteries and energy storage devices (7 percent), electronics (6 percent), hydrogen storage (6 percent), sensors (3 percent) and “other” (3 percent).

Japanese inventors hold the lead in the percentage of total patents filed, but 90 percent of those patents have yet to be filed in other countries, the researchers found. Inventors in the United States own 49 percent of multicountry patents.

The findings mirror other studies looking at nanotechnology and publishing/patenting trends. In a paper published recently in Nanotechnology magazine, European Commission analysts found that nanotechnology publishing and patenting is growing somewhat in parallel worldwide. They concluded nanotechnology in general was neither scientifically nor technologically close to commercialization.

Baughman, who was a corporate fellow at Honeywell International before joining UT-Dallas in 2001, holds 51 U.S. patents and has published 173 research papers. He makes what he calls artificial muscles — fibers spun from nanotubes that expand or contract when injected with a charge. He received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop nanotube actuators and capacitors, which are used for storing energy.

“You could weave the capacitors into electronic textiles for soldiers,” Baughman said. The material could be used in uniforms to store energy but also might double as a protective clothing, based on nanotubes’ strength and light weight.

July 11, 2002 — With instability reigning in the Middle East, “energy security” has become a major concern for the United States. This could be good news for the burgeoning small tech sector.

Though no one small technology is likely to be the elixir that solves all the energy dependence problems, these technologies promise incremental improvements to existing energy processes.

Of all the small tech energy applications to date, nanomaterials that create catalysts have had the biggest commercial impact. They are used widely in automobiles and power equipment to prevent environmental pollution. This process involves creating nanoparticles and then recombining them into artificial structures that reduce the amount of energy needed to carry out a reaction.

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Lightyear Technologies Inc. in North Vancouver, British Columbia, recently developed a family of nanomaterials that can extract oil from tar sand deposits without creating environmentally unfriendly greenhouse gas emissions. By injecting Lightyear’s highly reactive materials into the extraction process, companies can generate the heat required to separate out the oil below ground, preventing greenhouse gas emissions from escaping into the atmosphere.

“Our technology is an incremental improvement over what has always been done,” said Charles Rendina, a vice president at Lightyear. The company recently applied to receive a $9 million grant from the Canadian government to test the materials in the field.

Rendina said the technology could provide a boost to energy production in North America because of the shear amount of energy stored in the tar sand reserves, the bulk of which are located in Canada. The largest recoverable reserve in Canada is thought to have more oil than the reserves in Saudi Arabia.

To date, companies have been forced to use costly strip-mining techniques to extract the oil, which can only reach about 25 percent of the reserves. Lightyear believes its catalysts can improve yields by 25 percent while simultaneously helping Canada meet the greenhouse gas guidelines outlined in the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate control agreement that has so far been ratified by more than 50 developed nations.

The company will likely face competition from other nanomaterial manufacturers, such as Dow Chemical Co. and Nanophase Technologies Corp., which are also looking to apply their materials to a wide array of applications.

Further downstream, car manufacturers are also experimenting with imbedding nanoscale particles into materials in an effort to build stronger and lighter vehicles. “The biggest effect on gas mileage is vehicle weight,” said Iran Thomas, director of the Division of Material Science and Engineering, at the U.S. Department of Energy. “Shaving off several pounds from a vehicle’s weight will increase fuel economy significantly.”

General Motors Corp., in a joint development with Basell, Southern Clay Products and Blackhawk Automotive Plastics, is experimenting with a thermoplastic olefin (TPO) nanocomposite, which it is using in a dealer add-on step-assist for its Chevy Astro and GMC Safari models. If the material performs well, the folks in GM’s Materials and Processes Laboratory are optimistic that nanoclay composites could become standard equipment on vehicle models by as early as 2003.

Another area of promise is the use of nanotechnology to lower manufacturing and material costs for energy processes that are currently too expensive. NexTech Materials Ltd. is an Ohio-based company that is developing high-tech materials and manufacturing processes for applications in fuel cells. The company produces a ceramic powder synthesis that is used in making components for solid oxide fuel cells.

“The problem with fuel cells is that, in terms of cost, they need to get down to around $500 per kilowatt,” said Steve Campbell, NexTech’s marketing director. Campbell believes nanotechnology could provide the performance boost and cost-saving measures that fuel cells need to get over the hump. As an example, he said, NexTech makes a nanoscale electrolyte powder that can be deposited onto porous cathode tubes. The company has also come up with a low-cost manufacturing approach for spraying the electrolytes onto the tubes — based on nanoscale technology.

While Campbell admits the fuel cell market is still very much in the development stage, the company is currently selling its ceramic materials to research institutes and fuel cell manufacturers all over the world.

Despite such promising developments, questions remain about the commercial viability of many small technologies in the energy world. “There are a lot of claims of interesting performance but nothing remotely commercial that is currently viable,” said Steve Gehl, director of strategic studies at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research outfit. “There’s still a lot of work that must be done before we manufacture this stuff reliably and in large amounts without inducing flaws or defects.”

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U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham visited Brookhaven National Laboratory on Friday to announce that BNL’s proposed nanocenter will officially move ahead.

In remarks to BNL employees after touring the labs on Long Island in New York, Abraham also signaled the Energy Department’s growing commitment to developing nanotechnologies that serve U.S. national interests, from bioterror detection to fuel cells that could help reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Calling nanoscience a “possible second industrial revolution” Abraham said that “in practical terms we are talking about the ability to literally see atoms, make them grow new structures, or manufacture machines smaller than a human cell. The implications of that new science are enormous.”

The $85 million Center for Functional Nanomaterials will include nanofabrication facilities, offices and scientific equipment including advanced electron microscopy, ultrafast laser sources and powerful probes for directly imaging atomic and molecular structures. The center’s resources will be open to university and industry researchers outside the lab through a peer review process.

“This is new science we are exploring here,” Abraham said. “And it requires new ways of doing science. To realize the promise of nanoscience — to create new lightweight materials that can actually repair themselves, or make highly efficient solar cells … means our scientists must work together as never before.”

The energy secretary cited examples of how small tech research is already beginning to make contributions to U.S security. “We were able to deliver cutting-edge detection devices after 9/11 to help secure the Winter Olympics because DOE funded biologists, chemists and others were doing basic research for years before these devices were critically needed,” he said. “Our scientists are working today to sequence the DNA of major toxins, which will lead to better detection and decontamination … and looking for better ways to sense and track radiological materials.”

Abraham said that the first phase of the project will finalize the design and engineering of the facility. Construction of the center, one of five for nanoscale research under development by the Energy Department, is expected to start by October 2003.

The secretary said that the BNL nanocenter, to be built next to the National Synchrotron Light Source, will be one of the most advanced nanoscience research facilities in the world. “The center will design new classes of materials to boost energy efficiency, new solar energy devices and superconducting material for vastly improved energy transmission,” he said.

Richard Osgood, associate director of basic energy science at BNL, said that the goal for BNL’s nanocenter is to be as user-friendly as possible for visiting scientists and researchers.

Osgood said that the energy secretary’s remarks represent a significant evolution in policy. “This is putting DOE into an area of research that will make it a focal point for a new alliance between academia, government and industry,” he said. “And this marks a renaissance in materials research.”

Yardley, managing director of the nanotechnology research center at Columbia University, one of six funded by the National Science Foundation, said that BNL can provide “unique and critical analytical capabilities with tools such as their TEM (Transmission Electron Microscope Facility) as well as their e-beam writing and imaging capabilities.”

Yardley said that BNL has expertise in areas that Columbia researchers are interested in such as nanoscale catalysts and fabrication technologies. The nanocenter would also provide a place for postdoctoral and graduate students to do work and gain experience in nanoscience.

SUMMIT, N.J., June 10, 2002 — PowerZyme Inc. may still be in an under-the-radar R&D phase, but it could be incubating an important technology in the market for mobile power.

The company’s micro fuel cell, developed with Sarnoff Corp. in Princeton, N.J., harnesses organic enzymes to combine the power of conventional batteries with the long run-time of fuel cells. Microfluidics in the device would control the supply of enzyme-enriched methanol fuel and carry away the waste products, carbon dioxide and water.

Don Scuilli, the company’s chief executive, said PowerZyme’s device would be environmentally friendly, operate at room temperature and capable of powering a laptop for as long as a week.

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Users would “recharge” their power source by swapping out a fuel cartridge that may initially cost about $4 or $5 and be significantly lighter than existing battery technologies.

Rose Ritts, the company’s chief operating officer, said the device would be environmentally “green” in several key ways. Unlike other micro fuel cells that use platinum or palladium as a fuel catalyst, PowerZyme’s doesn’t employ any heavy metals. That means a cleaner manufacturing process and no environmental contamination when the device is thrown out.

In other fuel cells, protons diffuse across a membrane fairly slowly. Scuilli said the company’s patented enzyme-enriched fuel mix actually pumps protons across its Active Transport Membrane.

Other companies racing to commercialize micro fuel cells include Angstrom Power Inc., Lilliputian Systems, Manhattan Scientifics Inc., MTI MicroFuel Cells Inc. and MesoFuel Inc.

“PowerZyme is in an extremely attractive market,” said David Berkowitz, vice president of Ventures West Inc., a venture capital firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, that has stakes in several fuel cell companies, though not in PowerZyme.

Industry analysts at the Freedonia Group expect the $7.5 billion U.S. market for portable power products to grow 7.2 percent a year through 2005.

“There’s a lot of pain among consumers with laptops that run only an hour or two before needing to be recharged,” said Berkowitz. He noted that laptop designers can’t add new features that consumers want because of the limitation of current battery technologies. “The lithium ion technology powering most laptops is hitting the wall,” he said.

PowerZyme was born with an initial $2.5 million from a group of angel investors. Vernon Bremberg, a former DuPont senior manager, is the company’s acting chief technology officer. Ritts, the project’s program manager at Sarnoff, is overseeing R&D at a small six-person lab on the outskirts of Princeton, N.J.

The company netted $5.4 million in a second round of funding in August 2001 from a group that included Arete Corp. Micro-Generation Technology Fund, Rockport Venture Partners and SAM Private Equity.

Scuilli said the company is on track to demonstrate a prototype for a laptop power source by the end of the year, but cautioned that it was too early to say how soon a commercial product would be ready. He also said that it’s too soon to know whether he’ll build a full company around the technology or license it to an industrial partner.

PowerZyme’s technology may not just enable existing products to work longer, the thinness, lightness and power density of the fuel cell may make new categories of products possible.

David Redstone, editor of the Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Investor, sees promise in PowerZyme’s approach. “Enzymes have evolved over millions of years to be very efficient and have high power densities,” he said. But he sees disadvantages with any micro fuel cell system that runs on methanol, which can be toxic. He believes companies such as Medis Technologies, which is commercializing a fuel cell that operates on alcohol, have the best chance to grab an early lead in the market.

On June 6, Medis, based in New York and Israel, announced that it will develop a mobile fuel cell battery charger system for the U.S. Army.

Scuilli is not dismissing the significant competition and technical hurdles, but noted that “when a baseball team is in a pennant race, you can’t spend all your time checking the out-of-town scoreboard. We’ve got to focus on what we can do and not worry about what we can’t control.”

Focused and careful product development is important in such a consumer-driven market, Berkowitz said. “Micro fuel cells have to work seamlessly and safely” if they are to satisfy millions of demanding customers.

If PowerZyme and other fuel cell developers can solve its significant R&D challenges, he predicts that their micro fuel cells, like the mobile phones and laptops they will power, could “start out as a small niche and work their way down” in price and into many devices.

June 4, 2002 — MesoSystems Technology Inc. in New Mexico said it has spun off a new company that will focus on developing miniaturized fuel cell components.

MesoFuel Inc. said it will use its microsystems expertise to generate hydrogen fuel safely and cheaply. Officials said overcoming obstacles of distributing and transporting hydrogen gas will break open the traditionally limited market for fuel cells, offering a clean energy alternative to oil and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign crude, according to news release.

Ned Godshall, former microsystems developer for Sandia National Laboratories, was named MesoFuel’s chief executive officer. As part of the spinoff, several employees were transferred from MesoSystems, where the fuel-cell technology was developed during the past two years.

Ardesta LLC, parent company of Small Times Media, invested $3 million in MesoSystems in early February.

By Jack Mason
Small Times Correspondent

ALBANY, N.Y., May 7, 2002 — Chances are you’ve never heard of Tech Valley, the region stretching up and down the Hudson River and centered on New York’s state capital.

Chances are better that you’ll be hearing more about the area.

The Capital District around Albany is home to ambitious development plans, and a cluster of organizations with small tech aspirations:

Moreover, with strong state government support and cross-institutional collaboration among the 1,000-plus high-tech companies in the area, Tech Valley has every chance of becoming a lot more than a marketing mantra.

The second annual Summit in Tech Valley, held April 30 at the Albany Marriott, drew more than 350 business executives and technologists to discuss the challenges of building the region into the next high-tech hot zone.

The event also featured a business plan competition that earned a $100,000 prize for Starfire Systems Inc. of Watervliet, N.Y. A local venture with a small tech focus, Starfire makes high performance silicon carbide ceramics materials, and is a product of RPI’s tech-company incubator, one of the oldest in the country, founded in 1980.

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who has hosted similar gatherings in Silicon Valley and New York City’s Silicon Alley, moderated two panels with area executives and educators as well as CEOs of local companies. Participants included executives from nearby Intermagnetics General Corp. a superconducting materials maker, MTI MicroFuel Cells Inc., Mechanical Technology Inc., and MTI’s sister company, stationary fuel cell systems maker Plug Power.

During a break between panels, Plug Power’s chief executive, Roger Saillant, showed off one of the company’s five-megawatt fuel cells running a model home set up under a tent in the parking lot.

Saillant explained that the fuel cell, which is about the size of two refrigerators, would benefit from advances in small tech. Saillant pointed out that the perfect membrane inside one of Plug Power’s PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells would be nanoscale –just large enough to let protons through, while forcing hydrogen atoms to give up their electrons to produce energy. He also noted that carbon nanotubes and other small tech approaches could help solve the challenge of storing hydrogen, the ideal fuel-cell fuel.

Over lunch, Gov. George Pataki presented an overview on New York State’s billion-dollar plan to build the Capital Region into a center for new energy and biotech companies, nanotechnology R&D and high-tech education. A statewide plan, Pataki’s Centers of Excellence program would support similar development in the Buffalo and Rochester areas.

Pataki noted that building Tech Valley was an economic imperative for New York “because we’re not just competing with others states, but with other countries as well.” He also cited the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the New York’s economy as another driver: 135,000 jobs lost, 377,000 workers displaced, 14 million square feet of office space destroyed and a loss of $7 billion in state revenues.

If Tech Valley is to take off, General Electric will likely play a pivotal role. One of the largest and most diverse corporate research centers in the world, its 1,700 scientists and engineers work on everything from advanced polymers to medical imaging devices such as the MRI machine, a GE invention. General Electric has said it will invest $100 million in the center, located just outside Albany.

Scott Donelly, senior vice president of GE Research, says that nanotechnology runs through and across a wide range of GE projects, from creating new composite materials to “solid-state” lighting of energy efficient, light-emitting materials built with small tech. Such full-spectrum LED lighting may replace the conventional incandescent bulb.

Donelly, an engineer, came over to GE Research two years ago from running the company’s medical systems division. As an example of how Tech Valley is becoming both cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional, he describes how GE researchers are working with scientists at the Albany Medical Center to create new contrast agents for MRI machines. Such designer molecules would be injected into patients to help doctors better “see” early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

William Acker, president of MTI MicroFuel Cells, said Tech Valley has the “right mix of resources, companies and institutions to make it a standout as a cultivator of new energy initiatives.” His own company, which is aiming to have portable, PDA-sized fuel cells on the market by 2004, is taking full advantage of those resources: it is developing the microfluidics system for its direct methanol fuel cells with University of Albany’s innovative new nanotech complex, Albany Nanotech.

A quick visit through Albany Nanotech with Michael Fancher, the nanocenter’s director for economic outreach, reveals a unique organizational blend of industry and university. IBM has committed $100 million, and the state $50 million more, to create a Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics at the center.

In addition to 35,000 square feet of clean room facilities under construction, Albany Nanotech is a multifaceted complex structured and operated more like a company than an academic institution. It is also tackling a unusual mix of programs: incubating new nanotech companies, training nanotechnicians, educating young adults about small tech and working with companies to design and build machine tools and manufacturing equipment for nanotechnology.

The second Summit in Tech Valley was better attended and more introspective than last year’s, according to those who were at the inaugural event.

Whether Tech Valley will grow as fast as its ambitions is an open question. However, like nanotechnology itself, only time will tell. In 10 years, the region and the small tech field may both be booming.

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Reprints of this article are available here.

April 9, 2002 – Tokyo, Japan – NEC Corp. has established a research center mainly to apply carbon nanotubes to fuel cells with the goal of commercializing small, long-life fuel cells for cell phones and notebook PCs as early as FY05.

The new research center, launched at the NEC research institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, will develop (within one year) technologies needed for commercialization, such as a method to change fuel, reported the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

NEC will then work to lower production costs and establish a method for mass production beginning in FY03.

Eric W. Pfeiffer
Small Times Correspondent

March 11, 2002 — In what is likely to poke one more hole in the technology bubble, a report released this morning places the nanotechnology industry at a mere $30 million in annual sales.

Previous reports have placed sales at $45 billion or more than 1,000 times larger.

“We are trying to come up with rational numbers for nanotechnology,” said co-author Tim Harper, chief executive of CMP Cientifica, a European-based nanotechnology research and consulting company.

Where other organizations have used a liberal definition of nanotechnology — for example, by including microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) — Cientifica’s “Nanotechnology Opportunity Report” focuses only on technology that is both sub-100 nanometers and “new.”

“It’s no good to define nanotechnology as something that just happens to have dimensions of a few nanometers,” Harper said. The report, therefore, does not include such things as carbon black in tires, even though the material is measured in nanometers, because it is not new. It also does not include the semiconductor industry, which has long worked at the atomic level.

The authors say the report — compiled in partnership with nAbacus, a nanotech consulting company based in Hong Kong — is the first to look at nanotechnology from a business, technology and global perspective. It shows that despite the nanotech industry’s small size, it is surprisingly robust.

The report says that 470 nanotechnology companies are evenly distributed throughout North America, Asia and Europe, although three countries hold the lion’s share: Japan, Germany and the United States, according to the report. Government and corporate R&D funding has reached $4 billion.

In some subsectors of nanotech, such as the production of nanotubes, the industry could even be called mature. Fifty-five companies are competing to make resilient tubes of graphite that are thought to strengthen and lighten materials. The largest percentage of companies, about 155, are selling the tools to develop the technology. These two sectors, say the authors, are poised for a competitive shakeout.

Nanotechnology, as the report bears out, is equal parts pie-in-the-sky science fiction and potential business blockbuster. For every mention of a self-assembling nanocomputing is an example of a company already selling a nanotech product in the market. In fact, even the most esoteric nanotechnology endeavors have a startup working in the space, and oftentimes more than one. There are no fewer than 18 companies working with quantum dots, which have been called programmable matter — the 21st century’s attempt at alchemy.

Like its close cousin MEMS, nanotechnology is an important enabling technology that will have a deep impact across a number of different industries. One of the largest and most overlooked by the media is the use nanocomposites to make everyday objects lighter and stronger, says the report. About 140 companies are working with some form of nanoparticle. Nanocomposites based on clay are currently being used in the packaging industry.

Among the other industries affected in the short term (up to three years) include tools and catalysis, a technology that makes a chemical reaction occur quicker. In the medium term (3-7 years), nanotechnology will make an important impact on the aerospace industry. “Aerospace manufacturers are eager today to adopt new materials that offer a 3 percent reduction in weight,” report says. “Nanocomposites … are already making their way into cars … (and) are achieving 10-15 percent weight improvements today, with a promise of 20-25 percent.”

Medicine, particularly drug delivery and bioanalysis, will also be affected by the nanotech industry, as well as batteries and fuel cells. “Nanoparticle- and nanotube-based batteries are expected to yield a 10 to 20 percent increase. … Of vastly more significance is the projected 100-fold decrease in charging times,” report says.

Before we see such improvements, say the authors, a number of industry bottlenecks will have to be broken. Numerous companies are working with nanotubes but, the report says, the material can still be expensive — $300 to $1,500 per gram. The cost will need to be reduced to a few dollars or a fraction of a dollar if companies are ever to use large amounts in new types of materials.

The report stretches an impressive 174 pages, not including a directory of companies and research institutions, and includes thorough descriptions of all aspects of the technology and the market opportunities across industries. Its sheer comprehensiveness and conservative nature is its strongest suit and may help to reset an industry that has suffered, like the rest of tech, from too much hype.

“I applaud a conservative approach,” said Gilbert V. Herrera, deputy director of business development at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. “It’s nice to see that irrational exuberance did not carry them away.”

Some industry reports, however, can fall into the trap of relying on secondary sources, increasing the chance for errors or duplication of information already widely known, according to Marlene Bourne, a MEMS analyst for Cahners In-Stat/MDR.

The Nanotechnology Opportunity Report uses information gathered from market research firms and the mainstream press. Sometimes, the source of a figure used in the report is not mentioned, in particular the 95 venture capitalists who have invested in nanotech.

LaMar Hill, director of business development at Albany NanoTech at the University of Albany, wasn’t surprised by the report’s predictions of short- and medium-term market impacts. “They aren’t revealing anything that new,” he says.

Still, the report is large and comprehensive enough to hold a few surprises for novices and experts alike. A few examples:

  • The Swiss, with a population of 3.5 million and government funding of $36 million, has the highest per capita spending on nanotechnology in the world.

  • A commercial fuel cell based on nanotechnology could be available in two to three years.

  • There has been a surge in nanotech patent filing in the last two years, more than quadrupling since 1999.

  • In August 2001, students at the University of Idaho grew a nanospring out of boron carbide. The purpose? A tiny spring in a nanomachine.

  • There are at least 20 companies ramping up for mass production of fullerenes, also known as buckyballs. They are 60 carbon atoms that form a sphere and are potential molecular machines. They’ve been touted as conductors, semiconductors, superconductors and drug-carrying capsules. The prices of fullerenes are expected to drop from $20 a gram to as low as 20 cents by 2004.

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