Tag Archives: Small Times Magazine

More needs to be done to attract this burgeoning population to fill the growing number of high tech jobs

By Sarah Fister Gale

Hector Ruiz, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, is one of the most prominent Hispanic figures in high tech. Born in Piedras Negras, a small town in Mexico, he walked across the U.S.-Mexico border every day to attend a high school in Eagle Pass, Texas, from which he graduated as valedictorian just three years after beginning to learn English. Ruiz went on to earn a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD from Rice University, before eventually becoming CEO of AMD.

But Ruiz is the exception in the U.S., where only a handful of Hispanics hold senior roles in scientific fields, academia and the high tech industry, and few students are finding their way into science degree programs, at community colleges or universities.

However, that fact is poised to change. The population of Hispanics is growing faster than any other minority group in the U.S. By the year 2010, nearly one out of every six Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one will be Hispanic, and in many Western states, such as California, Hispanics will make-up nearly 50 percent of the working population, says Gus Koehler, president of Times Structures and co-author of “Training California’s New Workforce for 21st Century Nanotechnology, MEMS, and Advanced Manufacturing Jobs,” a survey prepared for the Economic and Workforce Development Program of California Community Colleges’ Workplace Learning Initiative.

Koehler points out that a huge number of high tech workers are beginning to retire, while new jobs in nanotech-related fields are being created daily as new products come to market.

“Who’s going to replace the retirees and fill those jobs?” Koehler asks. Hispanics.

Too often pigeon-holed into low-skill, low paying jobs, Hispanic students should represent the next wave of high tech engineers, operators and scientists – if schools can figure out how to draw them into the key fields in science, technology, engineering and math.

“There is a big educational gap,” notes Diana Rude, president of Bina Consulting, an economic development firm in Carmichael, Calif. She points to 2005 data on students in California that shows 58 percent of Hispanics in eighth grade scored below basic levels in math, and in 12th grade 70 percent scored below basic levels in science. “We are not doing a good job of educating these students.”

Rude also notes that the need to draw Hispanic kids into math and science is about more than helping them; it’s about helping the economy.

“This is a matter of having access to trained workers,” she says. “They will represent a majority of the workforce in 2010, and there is a strong economic link in California between educational attainment and increased investment and business development.”

Part of the challenge is that much of the population is not traditionally pushed toward science or math. If their English language skills are poor, Hispanic students may be redirected into remedial classes, or labeled as under-achievers when in fact they have all the skills and motivation to pursue deeper training.


An instructor and a student at Central New Mexico Community College examine a MEMS wafer together. Program proponents say the mentorship is critical in motivating students to enter technical fields. Photo courtesy of Central New Mexico Community College
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Complicating matters further is that many Hispanics don’t recognize science and engineering as offering viable, good paying careers, says Juan de Pablo, professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and the director of the Materials Science Research Center on Nanostructured Materials. “They have no role models at the scientist level or in the schools,” he says, noting that when it comes to drawing a generation into a new field of work, familiar role models are critical.

De Pablo, for one, is working to tackle these obstacles, through programs funded by grants from the state of Wisconsin and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Through the PEOPLE program (Pre-college Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence), which began in 1999, de Pablo works with teens who participate in three-week hands-on workshops where they learn about microelectronics and nanotechnology through activities such as dismantling and reassembling computers, touring cleanrooms, and measuring objects at the nanoscale.

“It’s exciting to watch their interest in science grow and to see them get drawn in,” de Pablo says.

He also works in partnership with the University of Puerto Rico to encourage graduate students to pursue PhDs at the University through grants from the National Science Foundation.

“Having Latinos achieve their PhDs and become prominent researchers in the U.S. is the first step in developing role models for younger students,” he says.

It’s already having an impact as several of his Ph.D. students mentor and teach the students in the PEOPLE workshops. “The kids get to see someone from a similar background, who speaks Spanish, getting a PhD in science, and that’s very effective,” he says.

Similar programs are underway across the country, where universities and community colleges are partnering with high schools to pique students’ interest in the sciences. But it’s a long battle that is far from over, says Matthias Pleil, a faculty member at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque where more than 50 percent of the student population is Hispanic. Pleil is part of a group at CNM that runs MEMS Academy, a program sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories, that encourages middle and high school students to take advanced classes in science and math. “Getting high school students hooked on science is something we always struggle with.”

Pleil blames the elimination of labs and vocational training, at least in part, for the problem. “We need to do a better job of teaching science as an applied field.”

A group of French researchers have determined that processes for dying gray human hair black that were developed two millennia ago rely on nanoscale phenomena.

Philippe Walter and colleagues at the French Museums Restoration Research Center in Paris found that a recipe from the Greco-Roman era worked because of nanocrystals of lead sulfide that form inside hair shafts.

The research, which appeared in the journal Nano Letters, is another example of how nanoscale phenomena have been harnessed for eons, long before scientists (or, as the case may be, cosmeticians) understood how the processes they were using worked.

But it is hardly the only ancient use of nanotech. Indian kaajal, an ancient type of eyeliner, is riddled with nanotubes, according to research by a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology that was reported on in Small Times’ small world section in the May/June 2006 issue.

Sensors, software protocols have reached a point of maturity where real world rollouts are finally feasible

By Jo McIntyre

Various technological developments related to monitoring operations within electric grids, industrial plants and commercial buildings have converged recently to make more sophisticated sensor networks possible.

Refined IEEE wireless communication standards for sending data, and falling prices on sensors have brought costs down far enough to get products into the marketplace. And mesh networking has developed enough to allow for continuous connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths, so a network can still operate even when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad. The next step is to monitor usage at the residential or even appliance level and transmit that data to the electric grid.

The power generation industry also needs to be able to regulate renewable energy inputs into the grids, says Dan Rastler, technical leader of the distributed energy resources program at the Electric Power Research Institute, or EPRI, based in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Institute has long applied new technologies to the power generation and utility industries to manage distribution systems. Today, EPRI is trying to integrate sensors into technologies for load control of, for example, air conditioning systems transmitting data through wireless or fiber optic systems.

“As we see more expansion of distributed power and renewables, like photovoltaics, we’ll need to have more capability to provide information to the service network,” Rastler says.


Harry Roman, former emerging technology and transfer consultant at PSE&G and a longtime proponent of sensor networks, displays a MEMS acoustic sensor. Photo by John Madere
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Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) in New Jersey is also incorporating some of the new technology into its operations.

On July 4 this year, PSE&G received a patent on MEMS-actuated fiber optic-based acoustic emission sensors, two to five microns in size, to monitor transformers, and is developing similar technologies for cables and power lines.

“We have to think about how to overlay a system onto what exists to improve its operation,” says John Del Monaco, manager of emerging technology and transfer at PSE&G.

“We’re focused on incorporating sensors into our system and getting information back, all done in real-time, to understand what’s happening in the system.” He said the company is striving to make its existing infrastructure work as a “smart and reliable utility.”

PSE&G has installed a prototype sensor system in a 230kV-to-13kV transformer, which steps bulk energy transmission voltage down to primary distribution voltage.

The company monitors data from the sensor, which is installed in an eight-inch probe that goes into transformer oil. The probe measures certain frequencies in acoustic emissions and compares that data to data from existing acoustic sensors outside the transformer.

PSE&G is working on another sensor that will monitor relay settings, water levels, pre- and post-fault conditions, transformer oil temperatures, moisture and ambient temperature.

With their research partner, New Jersey Institute of Technology, PSE&G is also developing temperature sensors that will be on transmission lines, looking for problems in splices, and transmitting information wirelessly to a company location.

Farther into the future is a project designed to understand information for network protectors for the company’s distribution system. Information will be sent to division locations via a fiber optic network. This is a joint project envisioned being done with a manufacturer and EPRI. Other areas under development are communication devices to transmit data back to division locations, and the software to interpret the data.

To address what could be a burgeoning market, several manufacturers are already making sensor network products. For example, in mid-October, Emerson Process Management and Dust Networks announced that the division will use Dust Networks’ time synchronized mesh protocol as the communications technology to run Emerson’s new in-plant wireless field networks.


Dust Networks’ approach to mesh networking connects monitoring and control systems with sensors, actuators and other devices that interact with the physical world. Illustration courtesy of Dust Networks
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Emerson Process Management is a division of St. Louis-based Emerson. The company has fluid level, temperature and acoustic sensors, built specifically for the process control industry, including oil fields and refineries, as well as companies monitoring switching stations and power plants.

After three years of evaluations, Emerson now has supply systems ready for mainstream manufacturing use. Features include a rugged design for industrial environments, vibration resistance and an industrial temperature range of -40 to +85 degrees Celsius.

Dust Networks, based in Hayward, Calif., makes low-power wireless sensor networking systems facilitated by their mesh protocol. Rob Conant, co-founder and vice president of business development for Dust, said a key change in the industry has been agreement on the IEEE 802.15.4 radio standard for low power radio signals.

“I think that ultimately what will happen will be more effective monitoring and control,” Conant says. “This technology reduces the cost of collecting data by a factor of ten.”

Another technological development, Conant said, is more extensive predictive maintenance. By monitoring vibrations in motors, pumps, generators and turbines, he said, one can see failures developing and prevent unplanned downtime.

These technologies are converging as costs come down, especially wireless technology. “It has happened in the past couple of years, but it’s just coming into end user products right now,” Conant said.

T.J. Glauthier, an EPRI alum, is a member of the strategic advisory board formed by EnerNOC Inc., a Boston-based company that makes demand response and energy management products. He is working on renewable energy and issues related to climate change.

EnerNOC products enable energy users and suppliers, system operators, and utilities to manage distributed energy resources with network operations centers for online monitoring and control of power usage at remote sites.

“Economists argued years ago that this made sense, but we didn’t have online communications before,” Glauthier says. “EnerNOC is working with IBM, grocery stores (and) hospitals to help them reduce power in non-crucial ways like lighting or air conditioning.”

The role for MEMS sensors may be in some of these applications – to cut back lighting some, but not all, he said. “What we’re going to find is that the sensors will allow us to go to another level – monitoring usage or temperature very carefully. Sensors need to be cheap, effective, reliable.”

Kurt Yeager, another EPRI alum, is now leading a study on energy policy and climate change for the World Energy Council. He is working with Bob Galvin, the former chairman of Motorola, on the Galvin Electricity Initiative.

They are seeking to develop so-called micro-grids that incorporate advanced electronic control systems to go between consumers and the grid to raise quality and reliability of bulk power by moderating the power in the micro-grids. Micro-grids use electricity from the bulk power system and also can operate independently of the bulk power system with whatever renewable power sources they have available, like photovoltaics.

Yeager says that while it’s hard to incorporate renewable energy into the electric grid system, sensors and controls using MEMS technology are at the heart of networking systems that can facilitate a change.

“They are all micro-controls,” Yeager says. “(They are) the brains of the system. The first step is to put in sensors that can detect disturbances before they happen, to take corrective action. That’s driving the sensor revolution today.”

Structural nanomaterials, sensors show promise but providers must prove reliability first

By Genevieve Oger

When artists’ drawings of space elevators built with carbon nanotubes started making their way onto the science pages of local newspapers a few years ago, it seemed like nanotechnology was on the cusp of revolutionizing space exploration and aeronautics. But today such dreams have, well, fallen back to Earth. With reality failing to match the grand expectations, aeronautic industry watchers have become a little more circumspect.

“Technologies flying in space are 10 years behind what is state of the art terrestrially,” said Thomas George, formerly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a founder of CANEUS, a non-profit organization devoted to increasing the use of micro and nanotechnology in the aerospace industry. “In the 1960s and the Apollo years, space innovations were driving technology forward, but that’s no longer the case.” The main difficulty today, he argues, is that testing is much more expensive in space and that the high cost of airborne missions makes space agencies quite risk averse.

Despite this, the aeronautics industry is actively researching how it can harness the promise of micro and nanotech. And a few firms are managing to do so today.

Swiss-based Colibrys focuses on providing its customers with MEMS and MOEMS components and subsystems – specifically, motion sensors designed to be used in harsh environments to detect tilt, acceleration, inertia, shock and vibration. Such sensors can be used in missiles, drones, small civil aircraft or for other navigational purposes.


No nano: Currently, there are no nanotech applications within Airbus aircraft bodies, according to Henrik Roesner, a structure engineer at Airbus. But, he said he expects that within the next few years there will be some nano-related breakthroughs. Photo courtesy of Airbus
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Colibrys has a staff of 110 in Neuchatel and another 150 in Houston, Texas. Its customers include British defense and aerospace company BAE Systems and French defense and electronics company Sagem, as well as other defense contractors.

Colibrys’ business has been growing 30 percent a year, in part because its products can be used by the military. “The process is trying to take technology that has been qualified in cars or industry, (and cause it) to be adopted by the military and then aeronautics,” said Sean Neylon, chief executive. “After that confidence building, the people who work in space will use it.”

Satellite companies are also experimenting with micro and nanotech solutions. European aerospace group Alcatel Alenia Space has been testing RF MEMS. They have the potential to improve communications between a satellite and its base by ensuring better quality transmission with less power drain. The company has taken part in different European-Union-funded research programs focused on the technology, but so far, it hasn’t been able to use it in their products.

“It will be a long time before we can use RF MEMS in commercial satellites, though I am confident they will be used one day,” said Augustin Coello-Vera of Alcatel Alenia Space. “Those customers want to see them in orbit for several years before they are used widely, so we must use piggy-back demonstrators,” he added, referring to the practice of testing new technologies by adding them as auxiliary payload.

Satellite makers whose customers are mostly non-commercial, such as Colorado-based Microsat Systems, have had an easier time integrating micro and nanotech innovations in their products. The company, which is under contract with the General Services Administration (GSA), the U.S. federal government’s procurement agency, has used micro and nanotechnology to build a 220-pound micro-satellite.

“We embedded the electronics and power storage of the satellite into a composite material, turning it into a multifunctional material,” said Mohan Misra, the company’s CEO. In addition, the solar panels that power the satellite were placed on light-weight plastic instead of silicon. “We also used micro and nanoscale devices and mechanisms,” Misra said. “Combining all these things, we were able to reduce the weight ten-fold.”

Generally speaking, the aeronautics business remains extremely conservative and risk averse, making it difficult for micro and nanotech applications to be integrated into new products.

This is even more so in the case of civil aircraft makers like Europe’s Airbus. Automobiles and trains might crash every day, but any commercial airliner accident or malfunction makes headlines around the world. “Currently, there exists no nanotechnology applications in our aircraft,” said Henrik Roesner, a structure engineer at Airbus. “But we expect that within the next few years, we will have some breakthroughs.”

Airbus is particularly interested in harnessing the power of micro and nanotech to assess the structural health of aircraft, much in the way the body’s central nervous system allows a person to feel the pain that causes him to give attention to a specific body part. For example, the company is exploring at the laboratory stage the idea of developing piezoelectric paint made of lead-zirconate-titanate nanopowder. On a plane, such a piezo-active surface could behave like a very precise sensor, capable of generating electric information about possible vibrations, defects or impacts on an aircraft surface.

Roesner stresses that micro and nanotech offers great promises, but that the aircraft industry operates in unique conditions – carrying human beings – and that puts extreme demands on qualifying new technologies. “The material really needs to be better,” he said. “And we need to ensure that the material will maintain these properties in extreme conditions and on a long-term basis.”

Around the next bend: 2007


November 1, 2006

Unpacking the year’s micro/nano agenda before the trip even begins

By Charles Choi

The past is so, well, over. But 2007 is just a few holidays away. What should you expect for the coming year? How about a global ramp of nanotube production, the first big test of alternative electronics manufacturing, and a pitched battle over nano patent rights, to name just a few items. Read on for an advance peek at these and other tiny tech trends expected to drive micro/nano commercialization in the year ahead.

Call it the year of the multiwall tube. Experts say to expect a rapid increase in multiwall carbon nanotube commercialization efforts next year.

The floodgates are opening because pioneering nanotube maker Hyperion Catalysis’ foundational patents on multiwall tubes have expired. As a result, said Sean Murdock, the executive director of trade group NanoBusiness Alliance, “We should see a broader-based experimentation with multiwall carbon nanotubes and a growth in applications that use them.”

That will enable a gaggle of competitors to start cranking out multiwall tubes for all manner of applications, and the increased supply could create some price competition. But, experts say, carbon nanotubes are hardly all alike – and the differences in quality could cause production of commoditized multiwall tubes to shift to low-cost locations.

Bayer AG in Germany and Arkema in France have been very aggressive in entering the multiwall carbon nanotube space, with Bayer showing price leadership, said Matthew Nordan, president and research director at market research firm Lux Research. CNT Co. in Korea has also ramped up production, he said. Meanwhile, Paul Glatkowski, vice president of engineering at Franklin, Mass.-based carbon nanotube firm Eikos, pointed to Mitsubishi and Mitsui in Japan as leading suppliers.

Regardless of who the premier suppliers will be and how much they can produce, said Wasiq Bokhari, a managing partner at emerging tech advisory firm Quantum Insight, the multimillion dollar question is what the demand for carbon nanotubes will look like.

Many of the exciting device opportunities – such as in computer memory, video displays or medical diagnostics – demand single-wall tubes. “Unless really interesting high-value applications are found,” Bokhari said, “I’d say they (the multiwall tube providers) will follow a commodity path for cents per pound as filler materials – for instance, in car tires – which means most of the multiwall carbon nanotube companies will close down starting next year and multiwall carbon nanotube scale-up will move to Asia to do it cheaply.”

Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however. While Hyperion and other entrenched suppliers will no doubt see a slew of new competitors, Murdock and other experts say they are, at worst, likely to see only a limited erosion in price and market share.

It’s different from the dynamic that plays out when drugs go off patent, say experts. All the knowledge the original company developed for processing the product and integrating it into supply chains helps it maintain a leadership position despite the new players and the open playing field.

“It’s very, very difficult to get consistency of morphology and purity as you go through a (manufacturing) run, and other companies that can and will scale their production will have to go through the same learning curve we’ve already experienced,” said Michael Laine, director of business development at Hyperion.


Different nanotubes, different markets: The two types of carbon nanotube at left are both single-wall but have different properties due to their chirality, or “twist”. They are generally sought after for high-value applications like electronics. The multiwall tube on the right often serves more mundane purposes, such as for additives in tires and sporting equipment. Illustration by Bryan Bandyk and Paul Manz
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At the same time, he argues, high-value applications may be gaining a foothold. Hyperion is currently substituting multiwall carbon nanotubes for carbon black in electronic applications such as in hard drives or wafer handling – applications that are considerably higher up in the value chain than automotive tires. In addition, “a lot of new processes in the electronics industry are demanding chemical or heat resistance while keeping the natural performance of a polymer, so multiwall carbon nanotubes can be used there for higher-end uses,” said Laine.

Certainly other high-value applications remain on the horizon. For example, new applications could emerge from the nanotube yarns developed by researcher Ray Baughman at the University of Texas at Dallas and his colleagues.

“You could imagine making a sandwich material there that could be incredibly stiff and strong for a construction material, and talking about millions of pounds of nanotubes needed per month,” said Bokhari. High value, meet high volume.

Manufacturing gets on a roll

Nanotubes won’t be the only newcomers claiming more space on the factory floor. Printed electronics and solar power cells will also begin to enter mass production in 2007 via roll-to-roll manufacturing innovations.

“In 2007, we’ll start to see a lot of companies start addressing how to take printed electronics out of the lab and into high volumes,” said Raghu Das, chief executive officer of printed electronic and RFID analyst firm IDTechEx in Cambridge, England.

A case in point is Nanosolar Inc. After raising more than $75 million in funding in 2006, the Palo Alto, Calif., firm will begin constructing a roll-to-roll printing plant in the San Francisco Bay area in 2007 that it says could produce more than 200 million solar cells a year – or an output of 430 megawatts – using nanoparticle ink. Nanosolar also aims to build a plant in Germany to assemble those cells into what it claims could be more than a million solar panels a year.

Nanosolar’s technology is based on thin films of the semiconductor material copper indium gallium diselenide, or CIGS. The company plans to pursue the solar farm market as well as the housing and commercial building market with roofing, walling and windows that have integrated solar energy collection.

A number of other solar cell companies are pursuing high-throughput methods as well, but not necessarily roll-to-roll printing. Halfmoon, N.Y.-based DayStar Technologies plans to produce 20 megawatts of its CIGS cells by the end of 2007 using roll-to-roll sputtering, according to Terry Schuyler, DayStar’s vice president of sales and marketing. HelioVolt, based in Austin, Texas, intends to begin construction on a factory in 2007 to produce nanomaterial-based CIGS cells based off its proprietary field assisted simultaneous synthesis and transfer (FASST) process. The company declined to disclose the volumes it intended to manufacture.


The big test of roll-to-roll processing: Nanosolar of Palo Alto, Calif., says it intends to use a major cash infusion from 2006 to begin building a processing plant for solar cells in the San Francisco Bay area next year. Photos courtesy of Nanosolar
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It is hardly a U.S.-centric trend. NanoIdent of Linz, Austria, is also investigating printable solar cells and producing devices via roll-to-roll fabrication. “They have been quietly but effectively establishing themselves as a leader in printed semiconductors for more than four years,” said Bokhari. NanoIdent was co-founded by Franz Padinger, the former chief technology officer of Konarka Austria, and has on its scientific advisory board Niyazi Sariciftci at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, a colleague of Alan Heeger, the Nobel Laureate discoverer of organic semiconductors.

In 2007, Bokhari said he expects NanoIdent to commercialize its first product, a printable organic semiconductor-based photodetector. Next year, he added, the company may also debut a printable fingerprint reading photosensor through its subsidiary Biometrics GmbH, as well as a photosensor printable onto microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices through its subsidiary BioIdent Technologies in Menlo Park. He expected NanoIdent to have a working photovoltaic cell in 2008 that could be ready for commercialization in 2009.

By late 2007, PolyIC, a German joint venture between Siemens AG and Leonhard Kurz GmbH, should begin trials of roll-to-roll printed RFID transistor circuits with companies, IDTechEx analyst Das said. He added that Colorado Springs-based OrganicID is also going after roll-to-roll printing of RFIDs, and was recently acquired by Weyerhaeuser of Federal Way, Wash., an international paper company. “We should see a lot of packaging and paper and board companies get involved in printed electronics,” such as Stora Enso in Finland and Tetra Pak in Sweden, he said.

The field of printed electronics also needs to bring more printing companies in, said Motorola’s director of printed electronics, Daniel Gamota. He said the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) will unveil a roadmap for printed and organic electronics around February 2007, and will recruit more printers into the field as well as establish goals for the technologies over the course of next year.

Legal eagles start duking it out

All the micro/nano action won’t be happening on the factory floor, however. Some of it will take place in the courtroom. Experts have long pointed to single-wall carbon nanotubes as an area where overlapping patent claims will lead to a courtroom showdown but nanopharma may get there first.

The lawsuit expected to draw attention in 2007 is that between Irish drug maker Elan and Los Angeles-based competitor Abraxis Bioscience. Elan filed suit in July 2006 against Abraxis for infringing on two of its patents regarding nanoparticle formulations of anticancer drugs with Abraxane, the first nanoparticle drug approved by the FDA.

In 2005, Abraxis posted $134 million in Abraxane sales, a reformulation of the breast cancer drug paclitaxel. It promotes the drug with AstraZeneca. Abraxis denied the allegations and filed a counterclaim against Elan, challenging the validity of their patents and requesting a jury trial.

“People will want to watch that because there is a big, big thicket of intellectual property surrounding nanocrystalline drugs. There are some 30 companies involved, and a lot of key intellectual property goes way, way back,” said Lux’s Nordan. “For instance, Drug Delivery Services (DDS) in Germany had a milling process to produce drug nanocrystals, and is now owned by SkyePharma, which licenses the technology to Baxter. SkyePharma also purchased RTP Pharma for its nanocrystalline drug reformulation technology in 2001.”

What’s more, the case could kick off a trend. “This case is very interesting because I think it’s the start of a big wave of new patent infringement cases dealing with nanotechnology, as more patents in nanotechnology accumulate and more products reach the market,” said William Prendergast, an intellectual property lawyer at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione in Chicago. “The patents at issue here with Elan, assuming they’re valid, are broad enough to cover other nanoparticle formulations of drugs that Abraxis or others might have in the pipeline.”

Nano financial markets go global

For most micro/nano companies today, patenting is a global phenomenon. So, apparently, is finance.

Startups have always had problems making it past the valley of death, that difficult stage between proof-of-concept and the marketplace. It’s an especially acute problem for micro and nanotech since the extensive R&D often required can drain coffers and turns away prospective investors. As a growing number of startups have discovered, there is another nasty surprise awaiting those that make it across the valley and become a public company: the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, which was passed in light of financial scandals at corporations such as Enron, Tyco and WorldCom. Compliance with the demanding legislation can require millions of dollars.

Now London is calling. In the last year startups have reported brokers approaching them regarding the prospect of going public on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market for small companies, or AIM, in order to skip the burden of Sarbanes-Oxley.

“It’s like a water balloon – if you squeeze one place, it all goes somewhere else. I would expect more nanotech companies to appear on the AIM in the next six to 12 months,” said Gabor Gabai, chair of Foley & Lardner’s private equity and venture capital practice. “There has been a tremendous amount of interest and brokers who have been talking to clients of mine about doing an AIM deal.”

Micro and nanotech startups are growing increasingly mature, and their investors are looking to cash in before their stakes get diluted by new investors. “A lot of companies are not interested in going public on American stock exchanges and subjecting themselves to all the extra expense that Sarbanes-Oxley and other rules demand of them,” Gabai said. “So they’re looking at alternative markets, and the AIM is certainly one of those.”

Beside the AIM, Gabai noted other markets in the European Union, such as Frankfurt, as well as ones in Asia could be promising. “Even central European countries are starting to have reasonably good markets. I don’t think nanotech companies will go to central Europe, but they might want to do two markets or more at the same time in Europe.”

Foreign markets not only offer less restrictive regulations, but also alternative investors. “You hear a lot of talk about a cabal of only 40 institutional investors in the United States now willing to look at nanotech companies,” Gabai said. “But there is a lot of foreign money out there a company could reach to get around this cabal.”

“No small company can afford Sarbanes-Oxley. We’re all getting driven out. And this year London’s been trolling the waters,” echoed Paul Glatkowski, Eikos’ vice president of engineering. “They’d love to bring in all that high tech. Our company and a large number of others have been courted to go IPO there. And it’s tempting. The London Stock Exchange is killing Nasdaq in IPOs, with almost twice as many IPOs in 2005.”

The challenge will be whether companies can maintain investor interest after going out on an alternative exchange. “It’s not clear yet how stable these are, how likely investors in those markets are to hold their shares and have an appetite for follow-on offerings, (or) whether you can get analysts to follow your company,” said Gabai.

Acronym of the year: EHS

In short, it’s not clear whether such markets pose a healthy alternative. But there are other health concerns on the horizon: 2007 is the year experts say ordinary people will realize nanotechnology is entering their lives in everyday things like food. And public interest groups will grow increasingly coordinated to shape popular opinion of it. EHS – or environment, health and safety – will be a major theme.

Press coverage, said David Rejeski, director of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, will begin “moving out of technical magazines and the science section of The New York Times and into broadcast and popular magazines.” There was a story in Elle magazine in 2006, he said, and more mainstream coverage is likely to come. “We’ll probably get more pieces in fashion magazines, and those will reach millions of people, or in Consumer Reports or local newspapers, and reach whole new segments of society it never did before.”

At the same time, 2007 will also see “an explosion of NGO (non-governmental organization) activity on the national, local and international levels regarding nanotechnology, and not just in the environmental groups, but the public health and labor NGOs as well,” Rejeski said.

“The crosstalk between public interest groups has increased dramatically on this,” said Jennifer Sass, senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “Plans are beginning to get made, reaching common ground on what we want to see, what information we think the public should have, what kinds of restrictions we want on the pace of nanotechnology, or if not restrictions, increases in health and safety testing.”


Kristen Kulinowski
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Kristen Kulinowski, director of the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON), said consumer advocates will demand more oversight. “You’ll see consumer groups get interested in 2007 and start to test manufacturer claims for whether or not nanomaterials are in certain products.” ICON develops and disseminates information about potential environmental and health risks of nanotechnology. It is managed by Rice University’s Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology.

Ironically, some corners of industry will retreat from the fray. Food and personal care companies, for example, are likely to stay quiet regarding nanotech, “either halting nanotechnology research programs or pursuing them but making the word banned within their organizations,” said Lux’s Nordan. “I know of at least two personal care companies that have delivered the message from on high explicitly not allowing the words ‘nanotechnology,’ ‘nano-engineered,’ ‘nano-capsule,’ or anything else like them.” But it may remain a peculiarly western phenomenon. Nordan says nano-terminology in products is increasingly promoted and embraced in eastern Asia.

Companies like L’Oreal, Colgate and Palmolive have very strong customer relationships with nano-encapsulation companies like NutraLease in Israel or nanoparticle companies like Salvona in Dayton, N.J., “but you never hear about it,” Nordan said.

Some businesses are going out of their way to say they don’t use nanotech. Seven cosmetics companies, including Aveda, told Alternative Medicine magazine in May they have specifically chosen not to use nanoparticles in their products. “I think you may see next year that once nanotechnology reaches food, it will touch the third rail. I don’t think the nano community has any idea how much voltage there is there,” Rejeski said. “A lot of savvy NGOs are waiting for that to come out.”

The NanoBusiness Alliance’s Murdock thinks industry will “absolutely, unequivocally” increase efforts at outreach and education of the public next year. “We’re considering forums open to the public to reach a broader group, and creating a network of experts to talk about specific topics of interest, and more frequent webcasts and information online,” he said.

Murdock also said the Alliance is conferring with its members to determine whether best practices in nanotech labs and plants could be used to establish a baseline, a process he said would be formalized in 2007. Michael Laine of Hyperion Catalysis said the company already works with federal agencies on best practices for industry, and activities are underway to develop best practices for characterization, handling and monitoring of nanomaterials.

Expectations are mixed when it comes to government activity. The NanoBusiness Alliance’s Murdock expects to see the rollout of the basic level of EPA’s voluntary stewardship program in 2007, under which manufacturers would alert officials about the nano-products they are producing and tests they are running on them to understand the materials.

“I think you’ll see relatively good adoption of it,” Murdock said. The United Kingdom began its voluntary reporting scheme for industry and research organizations regarding nano-products in September.

However, Kulinowski said the relevance of the voluntary program may be challenged by reviews of 15 nanomaterials the EPA has conducted during the last two years that were reported via pre-manufacturing notices (PMNs). They ruled that one of those nanomaterials, a carbon nanotube, had unique properties that made it different from its bulk counterpart and that it therefore required more testing.

“When you look at the ruling on the carbon nanotube, you see 80 pages of absolutely nothing. It’s all been redacted – information on the specific compound, the company, the types of tests performed, and so on,” Kulinowski said. “It’s impossible to ascertain the level of scrutiny this compound underwent.”

That could turn out to be another major item on the agenda. Kulinowski pointed out that the EPA is only going to get more submissions for review of nanomaterials. Greater transparency into the EPA review process, she maintained, would benefit all the stakeholders from the public at large to the actual researchers and developers of nanomaterials and nano-enabled products.

Two bills seek to change patent rules but they may be too different to reconcile

By Richard Acello

As Congress prepares for a new session in January, House and Senate committees are at loggerheads over key provisions of patent law reform. The proposed changes could have an impact on the value of certain technology patents and have an effect on the best strategies for companies looking to commercialize nanoscale innovations.

In the House, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-San Antonio, Texas) is sponsor of a bill that would change the standard for receiving a patent from “first to invent” to “first to file,” a move that would bring U.S. law in line with most other nations. The Smith bill also severely curtails the availability of injunctive relief – the ability of a company that says its rights have been infringed to stop another company from selling an allegedly infringing product.

The Senate has countered with its own patent reform bill authored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s intellectual property subcommittee, and Pat Leahy (D.-Vt.), a member of the subcommittee. The Senate bill also contains “first to file,” but leaves available the remedy of injunctive relief. The Senate bill does limit the amount of damages for winners of infringement suits, by basing the royalties owed by infringers solely on the value of the “novel and non-obvious features” of the patent, rather than on the value of the product as a whole.

Meanwhile, a lobbying group called the Coalition for Patent Fairness is arguing in support of the infringement limits, as well as for a “post grant opposition” preceding that allows the validity of a patent to be challenged in an administrative proceeding before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rather than in expensive, time-consuming cases in federal court. The group includes major tech firms like Apple Computer and Intel among its backers.

The Senate version also requires a court to award attorney’s fees and costs to the prevailing party in most circumstances. “This shifts the risk of litigation to the plaintiff, because it makes it easier for a successful defendant to recoup attorney fees,” says Julian Zegelman, an intellectual property attorney with the Catalyst Law Group in San Diego. The Senate bill also seeks to limit the number of patent application continuances that can be filed.


Steve Maebius
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Some experts say they believe the two bills contain too many ideas to be worked into one passable piece of legislation. “I’m concerned that there are too many changes at one time,” says Steve Maebius, a member of the advisory board of the NanoBusiness Alliance and leader of the Foley & Lardner law firm’s nanotech industry team. “It’s difficult to get a broad base of support for all those concepts, but there’s a lot of support for first to file….Tinkering with damages invites a lot more debate.”

Maebius says the post grant opposition process is especially important to nanotech companies whose viability may hinge on the value and protection of their intellectual property.

“We need a way to weed out bad patents without resorting to litigation, which can run five years and millions of dollars,” Maebius explained.

Steve Jensen, a partner in the Orange County, Calif., office of Knobbe, Martens, Olson and Bear, agrees that the effort needs focus but sees different priorities.

“There were so many private interests that wanted particular changes to the bill to impact something specific to their industry and now there’s too much baggage” in the bills, Jensen says. “I think there’s widespread support for post-grant opposition of some kind, but not as much support for first to file which is thought to favor larger companies that have greater resources.” Plus, the injunction issue will have to be decided, Jensen adds.

Provisions of the Senate bill were meant to discourage opportunistic people who intend to derive most of their income from the results of patent litigation, says Scott Harris, a partner with Fish & Richardson in San Diego.

“The curb on damages is meant to discourage patent trolls,” says Harris, “but it also gives me a headache because if people can say I’m going to infringe on your patent, and I’m not going to have to pay you on the value of the total product, it waters down the protection.”

Catalyst Law Group
www.catalystlaw.com

Coalition for Patent Fairness
www.patentfairness.org

Fish & Richardson
www.fr.com

Foley & Lardner
www.foley.com

Knobbe, Martens, Olson and Beara
www.kmob.com

NanoBusiness Alliance
www.nanobusiness.org

The map and the charts below comprise the third installment of our ongoing series that ranks the U.S. states for their micro- and nanotechnology development.

The category presented here – research – is one of five categories used to generate a state’s overall score. In the previous two issues, analyses of venture capital investment and micro and nanotech density were presented. A compilation of the current series of individual categories is scheduled for the July/August 2007 issue of Small Times magazine.


The third category – research – of our state rankings shows consistency among the top-ranked states in year-over-year performance. All of the states in this year’s top-10, except for Michigan and Virginia, were also in the top-10 in the research category last year.
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1. California

Due to its sheer size and the diversity of its economy, California took the lead not only in the overall research category, but also in three out of the four micro- and nanotech-specific measures evaluated in the charts on the facing page.

However, California’s third-place slot in the measure that compares each state’s number of micro-nano grants to its overall number of grants may well be the most impressive showing. Ohio and Virginia edged out California for the top spot in that category, virtually tying. But their overall grant figures – both in number of grants and dollars awarded – are a mere fraction of that of the Golden State. The fact that California has a sizeable percent of its grant money going toward micro- and nanotech is an impressive achievement given the size of the state.

2. Illinois

Illinois stepped up a notch in the research category this year, moving from the third to the second slot, just barely nudging its way past Massachusetts. It did so on the basis of a strong, balanced showing across the board. It was in the top-five in all four of the micro- and nanotech-specific categories, and was in the top-two in one of them. By contrast, most other states had more checkered performances. In addition, Illinois benefited from strong overall expenditures on research relative to its gross state product.

3. Massachusetts

Massachusetts also moved up one rung from last year in the research category, shifting from fourth to third. The Bay State took a hit in the measure that compares the number of micro-nano grants to the state’s overall grants, just barely missing the top-10 while other, smaller states made the list. But it was second only to California for its share of micro-nano dollars compared to the country’s overall allocations, and its plethora of micro- and nano-related research centers pushed it up further, enough to overtake New York by a comfortable margin.

4. New York

Illinois and Massachusetts had closely trailed New York state in the research category of the 2005 state rankings but they got a leg up over the Empire State this year. Like Massachusetts, New York takes a hit for having a big economy, and it also just missed a top-10 slot in the measure that compares the number of micro-nano grants to a state’s overall grants. However, top-four performances in all the other categories made it a solid fourth, just ahead of Pennsylvania.

5. Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania benefited from a high density of micro-nano grant activity compared to its overall grants. It was third in the measure that evaluates both number of grants and dollars compared to the U.S. as a whole. A mixed bag of industry, clusters both in eastern and western Pennsylvania, and a burgeoning biotech hub in the east are fueling the effort.

6. Texas

Texas made strong strides, moving to the number six slot from ninth in the research category last year. The state posted strong results in all the micro- and nanotech-specific categories.

7. Maryland

Maryland fell from the fifth slot in 2005 to the seventh slot this year. Though it wasn’t in the top-10 in two out of the four categories shown, in both cases it was just shy of the list. Moreover, strong expenditures on R&D relative to the state’s gross state product helped it pull ahead of Michigan even though Michigan fared better in most of the micro- and nano-specific categories.

8. Michigan

Michigan moved onto the top-10 in the research category by eking into the top-10 in all four of the categories presented here, though it never scored better than eighth in any individual measure.

9. Ohio

Ohio managed to top one of the measures used to compute the research category score by besting California in the category that compares a state’s number of micro-nano grants to its overall number of grants. It posted strong showings in the two measures that evaluate a state’s performance as a percent of overall U.S. activity, but it suffered in the research center tally, where it didn’t make the top-10. Nevertheless, it moved to ninth in research from tenth last year.

10. Virginia

Virginia followed Ohio with a strong showing in its number of micro-nano grants relative to overall grant activity. That, and an eighth-place showing in one of the other categories, helped it creep into the top-10.
– David Forman

Four micro- and nano-specific measures are used to generate the research scores reflected in the map. Individual scores for the top-10 in each measure are reflected in the charts below.

In addition to the four measures below, data on overall academic, federal and industrial R&D expenditures are also factored into a state’s final score in the research category. These data are compared to a state’s gross state product.

The final scores on the map are calculated by taking the average of the four scores shown here as well as a final score for the overall R&D expenditures (not shown), then normalizing the result on a 100-point scale.

Comparison of number of micro-nano grants to state’s overall grants


This score is calculated from the ratio of a state’s number of grants that were for micro or nanotechnology in 2005 to the state’s total number of grants. The raw scores were normalized on a 100-point scale.
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Comparison of state’s dollars from micro-nano grants to total U.S. dollars


This score is calculated from the ratio of a state’s total money raised through grants that were for micro or nanotechnology in 2005 to the total (U.S.) money allocated through micro/nano grants. The raw scores were normalized on a 100-point scale.
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Comparison of number of micro-nano grants to total U.S. micro-nano grants


This score is calculated from the ratio of a state’s number of grants that were for micro or nanotechnology in 2005 to the total (U.S.) number of micro/nano grants. The raw scores were normalized on a 100-point scale.
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Comparison of state’s number of research centers to total U.S. centers


This score is calculated from the ratio of a state’s number of micro and nanotechnology research centers to the total number of such centers in the U.S. The raw scores were normalized on a 100-point scale.
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Sources: Small Times uses proprietary data for each state’s individual micro-nano activities, in addition to data from the National Science Foundation and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Oct. 31, 2006 — Silicon Microstructures Inc. (SMI), a Milpitas, Calif., silicon sensor designer and manufacturer, announced it has achieved ISO/TS 16949:2002 certification for its new six-inch MEMS production line.

The company said the certification will let it continue supporting the stringent requirements of the automotive industry through standardized production processes. Silicon Microstructures has already met the requirements of ISO 9001:2000.

Silicon Microstructures said it has been in compliance with ISO/TS 16949 requirements for more than 12 months as it ramped up production to 40,000 pressure sensors per day. SMI says the improvements have helped it to offer advanced MEMS sensors at competitive prices while speeding turnaround times.

The certification ties into the microsystem strategy of SMI’s parent company the ELMOS Group, as automotive grade microsystems as well as stand-alone sensor solutions can now be provided on an ISO/TS 16949 certified level together with the other ELMOS Group companies ELMOS Advanced Packaging B.V. and ELMOS Semiconductor AG.

The company’s pressure sensors are used extensively in applications ranging from high-pressure automotive tire pressure monitoring systems to low pressure medical respiration equipment. Products include the SM 5108 ultra-small pressure sensor and the advanced SM 5872, a single-chip pressure sensor with co-integrated digital signal processing, in SOIC packages, both designed for high-volume OEM markets.

Oct. 31, 2006 — Polychromix Inc., a Wilmington, Mass., developer of spectroscopy solutions, announced a collaboration agreement with NASA to provide Digital Transform Spectrometers tools for determining water content on the surface of the moon.

Under the agreement, NASA will outfit the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) with Polychromix near-infrared spectrometers.

The company said NASA chose Polychromix’s technology because of its unique combination of low power consumption, small size, low weight, robust design, lack of moving parts, and high reliability — all essential features for mission-critical measurements. The Polychromix near-infrared spectrometer will be included in the research vehicle to identify the presence of water ice at the moon’s south pole.

The LCROSS mission is slated to send a 2000-kg impactor smashing into a permanently shadowed crater on the moon’s south pole, ejecting a plume of lunar surface material that will be analyzed from lunar orbit by two Polychromix spectrometers, as well as several other instruments and cameras, aboard the LCROSS Shepherding Spacecraft.

The intention is to answer an intensely debated question in the astrophysics community, the key goal of NASA’s LCROSS mission is to determine the presence or absence of lunar ice in one of the moon’s coldest locations, a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. If present at sufficient concentrations, ice could be used in future long-term lunar missions for everything from rocket fuel raw material to human life support. The LCROSS mission, including Polychromix’s technology, will help resolve any ambiguities in recent measurements suggesting the presence of lunar ice.

Polychromix develops material analysis and spectroscopy solutions based on a patented MEMS core technology.

Oct. 31, 2006 — BOC Edwards, a supplier of technology, equipment and support services to the electronics and microelectronics industries, and Aviza Technology Inc., a supplier of semiconductor equipment and process technologies, announced that they have entered into a joint development agreement to develop Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology for advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

The collaboration will utilize BOC Edwards’ expertise in chemical precursor formulation and Aviza’s advanced ALD hardware technology to optimize deposition processes for high-k materials and metals.

BOC Edwards’ new line of Flex-ALD precursors enables the deposition of very pure thin films and extends the range of ALD compatible compounds to include heavier elements not previously available. The company says the novel precursors can reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of ALD processes by increasing precursor utilization, providing stable and consistent delivery without decomposition or condensation, and increasing growth rates for higher throughput. The Flex-ALD precursors will be evaluated as part of the agreement with Aviza before full commercial release.

Aviza offers both single-wafer and batch ALD platforms for DRAM, flash and logic device application needs. The Celsior single wafer ALD system is specifically designed to meet high-volume manufacturing and research and development requirements. Celsior features an innovative chamber, which offers increased throughput, lower chemical consumption and an extended process window.

The Verano 5500 batch ALD system is designed to process load sizes up to 100 wafers. Enabled by Aviza’s patent pending Across-Flow technology, the Verano 5500 is intended to provide process flexibility and film composition control that achieves single wafer results in a batch environment.