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Jan. 9, 2007 — NovaCentrix, an Austin, Texas, nanotechnology products company with a focus on applications in printable electronics, life sciences, and energetics, announced advancements to allow high volume production of nanopowders.

NovaCentrix said it completed these efforts to meet current and future commercial application demands, including the shipment of a large order of aluminum nanoparticles in the second half of 2006. NovaCentrix said its large-scale commercial production equipment is now capable of producing metric tons materials annually.

“Nanometals production is an area where large-scale commercialization has been elusive,” said Steve Leach, CEO of NovaCentrix, in a prepared statement. “NovaCentrix has broken the barriers by utilizing rigorous production process scaling techniques as learned from high volume semiconductor and computer manufacturing. While our production scalability is a testament to our technical capabilities, it addresses real marketplace needs in printable electronics, life sciences, and energetics.”

Over the past year, NovaCentrix said it has focused considerable effort on the development of commercial scale production of high-performance nanopowders of essentially any conductive inorganic material. The company utilizes its proprietary pulsed-plasma synthesis process to offer high performance and yet economical metal nanoparticles ranging from as small as 1 nm to 120 nm. NovaCentrix also produces a select range of high performance nanoscale oxides, such as iron oxide and niobium pentoxide.

To serve its target markets, the company is developing Metalon inks, a full portfolio of nanoscale conductive inks for printable electronics applications. NovaCentrix says Metalon inks are suited for high speed printing processes given that they are formulated from pure and discrete nanoscale silver and copper particles.

NovaCentrix has made available Metalon JS-011, a water-based, electrically conductive silver ink especially formulated for ink jet printers, and Metalon FS-066, a stretchable, conductive ink formulated to adhere to flexible substrates, and stretchable up to 100 percent while maintaining conductivity performance. For the life science applications, NovaCentrix’ Effisil silver additives are used in FDA approved wound care products.

Jan. 8, 2007 — Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., announced that its Inertial Stellar Compass (ISC) is now fully operational on board the TacSat-2 spacecraft, representing the first use of a MEMS gyro in a complete spacecraft attitude determination system.

TacSat-2 was launched on December 16 from Wallops Flight Facility. Following basic spacecraft commissioning activities, the ISC was first turned on December 27 and two days of preliminary functional tests show the instrument to be working perfectly.

The ISC combines a star camera and MEMS gyros with a microprocessor to provide a full 3-axis attitude determination system in a low power (3.6 W) and low-mass (2.9 kg) package, less than one-half the power and mass of conventional systems. It was developed at Draper Laboratory and uses Draper’s MEMS Tuning Fork Gyro package.

The lab says the fully autonomous, self-initializing instrument has operated flawlessly since being powered up on Dec. 27. Requiring no more than power and an occasional clock update from the host spacecraft, the ISC initializes upon startup, acquires and identifies stars from its own star catalog, and uses its “lost in space” algorithms to determine the direction in which it is pointing. If all continues to go well aboard the TacSat-2 spacecraft, a series of dedicated tests are planned for the coming weeks that will acquire extensive data to verify ISC performance under a wide variety of conditions.

The ISC development was funded by NASA’s New Millennium Program (NMP), which is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The TacSat-2 spacecraft was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and is operated out of the AFRL command center at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, N.M.

The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. is a non-profit engineering research and development laboratory dedicated to providing technological solutions in areas including guidance, navigation, and control; highly reliable embedded software; autonomous systems; miniature, low-power electronics; and biomedical engineering. Draper serves the national interest through applied research, engineering development, and technology transfer.

Jan. 8, 2007 — InvenSense, a Santa Clara, Calif., provider of integrated motion sensing solutions for mobile and consumer applications, announced it has secured $11 million in Series B funding.

The company says the cash infusion will finance a high-volume production ramp for its integrated dual-axis gyroscope and will fund the completion of new product development for the handset market. QUALCOMM Ventures participated in the round, along with existing investors Artiman Ventures and Partech International, who fully participated.

InvenSense said the new round is the next step in the company’s strategy to pursue new market opportunities for integrated motion sensing in consumer electronics, including gaming and mobile handsets.

Using its initial round of funding, InvenSense was able to complete development, testing and production of hundreds of thousands of units for its IDG product family of dual-axis gyroscope, and to secure multiple design wins with major consumer electronics OEMs, including Sanyo Electronics.

Jan. 5, 2007 — Advance Nanotech Inc., a New York-based provider of financing and support services to drive the commercialization of nanotechnology related products for homeland security and display technologies, announced that the company’s subsidiary, Advance Display Technologies plc (ADT), has appointed Gerhard Rebel to the position of chief technology officer and Tom Holzel, a display industry veteran, to its board of directors.

As was announced on December 22, 2006, ADT is in the process of listing its shares on the PLUS-Quoted (OFEX) market in London and expects to be listed by mid-January. Rebel’s appointment is intended to strengthen the management of ADT as it commercializes its technology portfolio.

“We are very pleased to have promoted Gerhard to this role. During his service as senior vice president, technology for Advance Nanotech, Gerhard played a leadership role in building these promising, young technologies into products with real road-maps to commercialization,” said Tony Goncalves, CEO of Advance Nanotech, in a prepared statement. “The recently announced planned listing of ADT in London will serve to underline the inherent value and strength of our display technologies.”

Rebel is a former engineering research fellow and lecturer at the University of Reading, UK, where he specialized in mechanical engineering, system modeling, materials science and advance sensor systems. He holds a BSc and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and an MSc in international securities, investment and banking from the ICMA Centre, University of Reading.

Rebel will be leading the development of a portfolio of technologies that will aim to serve current unmet technology needs within the $100 billion display and plastic electronics industries. Rebel remains a senior vice president for technology for Advance Nanotech Inc. and will join the board of directors of ADT.

ADT also appointed Tom Holzel to its board of directors. Holzel’s expertise in product assessment and the development of strategic positioning campaigns has consistently produced results for many start-ups as well as for companies including Raytheon, Sony, and IBM.

While it was still a prototype, Holzel sold a medical flat panel digital display to Zoll Medical for $12 million, so helping to fund the IPO of display company PixTech. Holzel sold a high-density low-voltage power supply to Motorola for $20 million, also a prototype.

He has been a company officer in four startups that led to IPOs and is a recognized expert in flat panel displays. Holzel was formerly the VP of Marketing for PixTech, a pioneer in the manufacture of first-generation field emission displays and ran their U.S. operations in Silicon Valley. Mr. Holzel has a degree in economics from Dartmouth College.

ADT was formed in August 2006 as one of two operating divisions and majority-owned subsidiaries of Advance Nanotech.

ADT has published a prospectus disclosing details of its proposed floatation by way of a placing of 50 million shares at 96 cents per share.

Following the placing there will be 50 million ordinary shares in issue, valuing the company at approximately $49 million at the placing price. Advance Nanotech Inc. will hold 94 percent of the issued share capital with a market value of just over $46 million. Trading is expected to commence in mid January.

ADT represents the consolidation of the company’s display technology portfolio and includes nine nanotechnologies providing nano-enabled materials and devices across three display applications areas: flat panel and projection displays, plastic electronics and flexible displays.

ADT possesses relationships with the University of Cambridge and the University of Bristol. The company says that of particular note within the portfolio is the NanoFED technology. NanoFED is seeking to utilize the unique properties of diamond, nano-sized dust to significantly increase the performance and lower the price of flat-panel displays.

Advance Nanotech says that NanoFED has exceeded expectations and that it intends to showcase the technology to potential licensors within 2007. NanoFED represents the first technology within ADT’s pipeline for commercialization and will be its first business built from an academic sourced platform technology.

Jan. 5, 2007 — Accelrys Inc., the San Diego-based software developer, announced the integration of Materials Studio 4.1, a comprehensive suite of PC-based modeling and simulation solutions for studying a wide range of materials properties and processes, with the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), a principal product of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Center (CCDC).

The integration of Materials Studio and the CSD allows for initiation of a CSD search directly from Materials Studio, providing rapid access to atomic coordinate and other information relating to more than 400,000 crystal structures. Alternatively, a substructure query prepared in Materials Studio can be automatically transferred to CCDC’s ConQuest interface for subsequent database searches that take advantage of ConQuest’s extended search capabilities. Post-search analysis can be conducted in either Materials Studio or ConQuest.

Crystallization plays an important role in various industries as a large-scale technique for separation, purification and structure determination. Many compounds are either sold in their crystalline state or at least crystallized at some point during their production process. Knowledge of crystal structures is a prerequisite for the rational understanding of the solid-state properties of new materials. Crystal structure determination is also required for reliable patent protection of new products.

“The CSD is recognized as the world’s repository of organic and metal-organic crystal structure data, holding more than 400,000 structures, with over 30,000 new structures archived annually,” said Frank Allen, executive director of the CCDC, in a prepared statement. “The integration of the CSD System with Materials Studio provides access to this evaluated data source on the desktops of materials scientists worldwide. When combined with the tools in Materials Studio, the availability of these data will lead to improved productivity and the faster solution of problems related to crystalline states.”

Jan. 4, 2007 — Apogee Technology Inc., a Norwood, Mass. -based micro-systems and nanotechnology company that designs, develops and commercializes medical devices and sensor products, announced that it has completed the installation of a dedicated laboratory facility at its headquarters to support the research and development efforts associated with its medical products group.

This new capability and planned expansion in staff will be used to further develop Apogee’s PyraDerm drug delivery system and enhance its pursuit of polymer drug formulations that can be applied to its transdermal delivery systems.

“Our initial laboratory efforts will be directed toward developing advanced drug delivery formulations and supporting our proof of concept studies in vivo, or in living systems,” said Alexander Andrianov, Apogee’s vice president of research and development, in a prepared statement. “With our new laboratory facility we will have the capability to perform formulation studies, produce samples for preliminary in vitro and in vivo testing, and provide real-time analytical and quality control support for our research efforts. By bringing this capability in-house we believe that we will significantly improve our control over the time and cost to perform our research and development activities, as well as better protect our intellectual property developments.”

Jan. 4, 2007 — ClassOne Equipment, a Decatur, Ga. supplier of high quality, reconditioned semiconductor and nanotechnology equipment, announced the launch of its new web site.

The new site features a completely new look and feel, more intuitive navigation to specific equipment categories and listings, and several sections with new content about the company’s reconditioning process, installation and training process, warranty terms, and more.

The site’s new reconditioning process page outlines ClassOne’s specific refurbishing processes for its primary areas of focus and expertise: Karl Suss mask aligners, wet process benches, lapping & polishing systems, Nanospec series thin film measurement systems, and Semitool & Verteq spin rinse dryers. The company says more sections will be added soon.


Plastic Logic’s “take anywhere, read anywhere” displays use imaging film from
E Ink. (Photo: Business Wire)

Jan. 4, 2007 — Plastic Logic of Cambridge, England, announced that it will build one of the first factories to manufacture plastic electronics on a commercial scale. The facility will produce flexible active-matrix display modules for ‘take anywhere, read anywhere’ electronic reader products. It will utilize Plastic Logic’s unique process to fabricate active-matrix displays that are thin, light and robust — potentially enabling a reading experience closer to paper than any other technology.

To fund the program, Plastic Logic has completed a first closing of $100 million of equity finance led by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation. Existing investors Amadeus, which led the seed financing of Plastic Logic, Intel Capital, Bank of America, BASF Venture Capital, Quest for Growth and Merifin Capital also participated. The financing is one of the largest in the history of European venture capital.

Bandel Carano, managing partner at Oak, said “Plastic Logic has created a pioneering technology that will revolutionize the way that people interact with their media on the move. This investment is a perfect fit with Oak’s vision of future media interaction through handheld devices.”

The facility will produce display modules for portable electronic reader devices — a product category that is predicted to grow to 41.6 million units in 2010. It will have an initial capacity of more than a million display modules per year and production will start in 2008. Dresden in the ‘Silicon Saxony’ region of eastern Germany has been chosen as the facility location following an extensive worldwide site selection process.

“Our displays will enable electronic reader products that are as comfortable and natural to read as paper whether you’re on a beach, in a train or relaxing on the sofa at home.” stated John Mills, chief operating officer at Plastic Logic. “Wireless connectivity will allow you to purchase and download a book or pick up the latest edition of your newspaper wherever you are and whenever you need it. The battery will last for thousands of pages so you can leave your charger at home.”

“Even in this age of pervasive digital content, our research shows that consumers are very reluctant to read on laptops, phones and PDAs,” said Simon Jones, vice president of product development at Plastic Logic.

“We still carry around enormous amounts of paper. However, people are making less room in their lives for the weight and bulk of paper and are becoming more sensitive to the environmental impact of printing to read. We believe there is a substantial unfulfilled need that Plastic Logic can meet by making digital reading a comfortable and pleasurable experience.”

By Richard Acello
Small Times Contributing Editor

Jan. 3, 2007 — In what may become an increasingly familiar byproduct of nanotech commercialization, a joint venture involving chemical giant DuPont has sued a supplier of a nanotech product used in semiconductor manufacture over a patent license.

On Dec. 8, attorneys for DuPont Air Products Nanomaterials (“DA NanoMaterials”) filed a complaint in Arizona federal court against Cabot Microelectronics Corp., seeking a judicial declaration that DA NanoMaterials is not infringing on Cabot’s intellectual property. On Dec. 12, Cabot issued a release saying that it planned to pursue legal action against DA Nano.

DA NanoMaterials, based in Tempe, Ariz., is a joint venture of chemical giant DuPont (NYSE: DD), which has annual revenue north of $26 billion and 60,000 employees in 70 countries, and Lehigh Valley, Pa.-based Air Products (NYSE: APD), which registered sales of $8.8 billion in 2006.

Cabot, based in Aurora, Ill., is a provider of sophisticated polishing compounds and polishing pads used in the manufacture of semiconductor chips that go into products ranging from personal computers to cell phones to servers. In October, Cabot (NASDAQ: CCMP) reported revenue of $320.8 million for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — a 19 percent increase over the prior year. Cabot has 750 employees in the U.S. and eight other countries.

At issue is the process used in the manufacture and sale of the slurry polishing compound and pad products needed in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP), which flattens silicon wafers to near-perfect smoothness. CMP enables multiple layers of intricate circuitry to be built upon the wafer surface.

DA NanoMaterials’ suit comes as Cabot asserts its rights to what it says is proprietary technology in the manufacture of the chip polishing products. In its complaint, DA NanoMaterials says it has received letters from Cabot alleging infringement of two of Cabot’s patents, and that in follow-up discussions Cabot asked DA NanoMaterials to cease its infringing activities or face legal action.

According to Cabot’s general counsel, the suit results from Cabot’s refusal to grant DA NanoMaterials a license to the technology in dispute.

“Some of the patents at issue are our foundational or core patents,” said H. Carol Bernstein, vice president and general counsel for Cabot. “Most businesses will not license their core technology, because it is their differentiator, it’s the way they bring value to the marketplace. We spend $45 million a year on research and development and have built up a fairly substantial patent portfolio that supports our technology leadership.”

Bernstein says Cabot learned through competitive intelligence that DA NanoMaterials’ polishing compounds were “copying our technology and infringing on our patents.”

About Cabot’s refusal to grant DA NanoMaterials a license to the disputed technology, Bernstein said, “We don’t think it’s appropriate to ask or demand that they be given a license.”

In June, Cabot “successfully concluded” a patent action before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against Korea-based Cheil Industries involving some of the same technology at issue in the DA NanoMaterials case, Bernstein added.

DA NanoMaterials attorney Michael Farrell of the Phoenix firm of Jennings, Strouss and Salmon, who filed the suit, did not return calls seeking comment. A spokesman for DA NanoMaterials says it’s the company’s policy not to comment on ongoing litigation, but added, “DA NanoMaterials believes it has viable products to serve this market, which are covered under their own patented technology and are not infringing the Cabot patents at issue. DA NanoMaterials is asserting its right to participate in the market with its current slate of CMP products without infringing the Cabot patents.”

On the other hand, Cabot’s Bernstein says she believes the case illustrates the importance of the patent system to technology companies such as Cabot.

“We really believe in the patent system and that it helps to fuel investments, inventions and development of the economy,” she explained. “It’s a fundamental part of why we’ve been able to grow in the U.S., especially in the Midwest, while others have been laying people off and moving overseas; it’s a fundamental part of who we are. We think it’s important to protect our R&D investment. Valid claims should be brought when someone is infringing.”

Jan. 2, 2007 — PI (Physik Instrumente) L.P., an Auburn, Mass., manufacturer of nanopositioning and precision motion-control equipment for life science, photonics and semiconductor applications, announced it is offering a series of high-speed microscopy objective scanner systems for 3-D microscopy applications.

These PIFOC piezo Z-drive systems are designed for easy integration into high-resolution microscopes. They are available as components or as complete systems including the piezo objective scanner, a controller and two distance cases.

The PIFOC units are intended to be ideal for high speed Z-stack image acquisition, the basis for the generation of 3-D views of samples in high-resolution, optical microscopes. Conventional Z-drives use a motorized actuator and motor controller to create numerous focus planes during focusing. The individual “slices” are then processed with special software to form one 3-D image. PIFOC systems are compatible with all major image acquisition packages.

Piezo-actuated Z-drives, achieve significantly higher focusing speed (typically 10 msec vs. 100 msec) and resolution (typically 1 nm vs. 100 nm) than stepper motor-drives and thus provide higher-quality images in less time.