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NanoCon Newswire

Aug. 21, 2006 (Romeoville, Ill.) — Nanophase Technologies , a technology leader in nanomaterials and advanced nanoengineered products, announced the initial order for a new textile application that is being introduced to the industry on a global basis. Details of the customer and application remain confidential at this time.

“This order represents the culmination of more than two years of application development with a leading global supplier to the textile industry,” stated Ian Roberts, Vice President of U.S. and International Sales. “As we have stated, nanomaterial applications for textiles is one of several target markets for Nanophase. This order represents the first product to be introduced for textile applications and we are optimistic about future development and new product introductions. While we do not expect material revenue from this application during 2006 in the initial launch process, we are optimistic about continuing revenue growth from the textile market over the next few years.”

Nanophase Technologies Corporation (NANX), http://www.nanophase.com/ , is a leader in nanomaterials technologies and provides nanoengineered solutions for multiple industrial product applications. Using a platform of patented and proprietary integrated nanomaterial technologies, the Company creates products with unique performance attributes from two ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001 facilities. Nanophase delivers commercial quantity and quality nanoparticles, coated nanoparticles, and nanoparticle dispersions in a variety of media. The Company owns or licenses 18 United States and 43 foreign patents and patent applications. Information about Nanophase may be found in the Company’s public filings or on its website.

This press release contains words such as “expects”, “shall”, “will”, “believes” and similar expressions that are intended to identify forward- looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements in this announcement are made based on the Company’s current beliefs, known events and circumstances at the time of publication, and as such, are subject in the future to unforeseen risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company’s results of operations, performance and achievements to differ materially from current expectations expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. These risk and uncertainties include the following: a decision by a customer to cancel a purchase order or supply agreement in light of the Company’s dependence on a limited number of key customers; uncertain demand for, and acceptance of, the Company’s nanocrystalline materials; the Company’s manufacturing capacity and product mix flexibility in light of customer demand; the Company’s limited marketing experience; changes in development and distribution relationships; the impact of competitive products and technologies; the Company’s dependence on patents and protection of proprietary information; the resolution of litigation in which the Company may become involved; and other risks described in the Company’s Form 10Q filed August 8, 2006 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, the Company’s forward-looking statements could be affected by general industry and market conditions and growth rates. Except as required by federal securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements to reflect new events, uncertainties or other contingencies.

Nanophase Technologies Corporation

CONTACT: Joseph Cross, President, CEO, +1-630-771-6705, or JessJankowski, VP, CFO, +1-630-771-6702, or Nancy Baldwin, Investor Relations,+1-630-771-6707, all of Nanophase Technologies

Web site: http://www.nanophase.com/

NanoCon Newswire

July 18, 2006 (Romeoville, Ill.) — Nanophase Technologies (Nasdaq: NANX), a technology leader in nanomaterials and advanced nanoengineered products, announces the commercial availability of nanocrystalline tin oxide produced by the Company’s patented NanoArc® Synthesis process using the most recent advances in finite particle size control. NanoArc® Tin Oxide consists of non-porous, dense, discrete particles with an average size of approximately 20 nanometers.

The new nanoengineered material is available as solid nanoparticles or as a highly stable dispersion in either aqueous or various organic media at high concentrations. NanoArc® Tin Oxide is expected to be suitable for a wide range of applications, including electrical and electronic components, antistatic coatings, polishing of various media, advanced ceramics and industrial catalysts.

For additional information, contact Dr. Ed Ludwig, Vice President of Business Development, at 630-771-6729, email [email protected], or Ian Roberts, Vice President of U.S. and International Sales, at 630-771-6730, email [email protected].

By Genevieve Oger
Small Times Contributing Editor

Sept. 5, 2006 — The French city of Toulouse is an aerospace town. The headquarters of Airbus and the French National Center for Space Studies are nearby, as is Aerospace Valley, a French cluster of hundreds of companies and state bodies focused on space. It’s an appropriate place to hold the third CANEUS conference, a bi-annual forum designed to help transform micro and nanotechnologies into real-life aerospace applications.

CANEUS is an acronym for Canada, Europe and the United States — the regions that launched the initiative five years ago. Asia and Brazil have since joined, though the acronym has remained unchanged. The group came out of a frustration many aerospace scientists were struggling with. Labs around the world were wasting resources by working on the same projects, each reinventing the wheel in their own way.

That wasn’t the only problem, according to CANEUS co-founder Thomas George, a director at software firm Vialogy. “I had been working at (NASA’s) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where we had developed 25 technologies, of which only one had made it successfully to mission,” he said, adding that micro and nanotech innovations in particular face Darwinian odds. “Out of 100 good concepts, less than one percent will make it to product — not because of technological flaws, but because the inventor isn’t savvy enough to raise money, to create a system level product, or (he or she) lacks marketing skills.”

The group’s founders realized that the great majority of micro and nano innovations never get beyond the initial phase. The concepts and principles might have been proven and the ideas might work. But the innovations have to be put into a system that will work with the rest of the aircraft. The unit must be tested for reliability on the ground and then in space. The great majority of innovations get stuck in this very expensive mid-development stage — the so-called “valley of death” applications must get through before making it onto a real flight mission.

The conference in Toulouse, held Aug. 27 to Sept. 1, was organized in three parts — First a short course briefing people on systems and different aspects of international collaborations, then a conference detailing what different experts are doing around the world, followed by two days of workshops. “The workshops are where we get to the meat of it, where we get to the business plans, look at end users,” George said. “All in enough detail to present a well-thought-out project to the guys with the money.” The focus of the workshops is on getting developers to work on projects end-users actually need and are willing to pay for. That way, traversing the perilous valley will be as quick as possible.

Xavier Lafontan is the manager of Nova Mems, a Toulouse area company that performs reliabilities tests on micro and nanotechnologies for their customers, which include Alcatel Alenia Space, MEMS-maker Memscap and industrial conglomerate Siemens. He says that the aeronautics industry is a particularly challenging environment in which to integrate new technologies. “At first glance it seems like a big market, but when you look closer you realize the components are extremely diverse and that the market for each product is actually quite small — making development costs very steep,” Lafontan said.

In addition, the aeronautics industry has very specific requirements — an aircraft has to last 30 years and components have to function in extremely harsh conditions — making it even more expensive. “So there is certainly a need for this type of gathering to identify where the sticking points are and how we can get beyond them together.”

Extreme conditions and product life aren’t the only reason why it’s tougher to break into the aeronautics industry, compared to, for example, cars or clothing. The United States still considers space a strategic interest and ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) concerns can sometimes prevent many international collaborations from getting off the ground. This obstacle leads some to think that this type of collaboration can never fully succeed. “Nothing is impossible,” said Alcatel Space’s Augustin Coello-Vera, “because there’s collaboration on the International Space Station, but it’s certainly very difficult.”

Despite the various constraints of the aerospace industry, a few success stories are beginning to emerge. One of the workshops of the 2004 conference in Monterrey led to a partnership on nanocomposite materials that was later funded by Lockheed Martin. The U.S. military contractor is now in the process of building the F-35 Lightning II, a fighter aircraft for the U.S. and British governments. CANEUS Chairman Milind Pimprikar says the new plane is scheduled to be equipped with this nanocomposite material. “It was one of the concepts presented in the workshops of the 2004 conference and now the project is moving ahead.” This year, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency committed to funding about one fifth of a miniature satellite project presented at one of the workshops.

The Technologies Reliability workshop at the 2006 event looked at setting up international standards for testing small technologies in space. One of the greatest barriers to using new technologies in flight missions is that the stakes are so high that space agencies or satellite companies don’t want to take any risks with new components or materials.

David Openheimer, chief scientist for Tennessee-based venture capital group Capri Partners says this remains one of the greatest barriers to developing new space applications. “Without an international standard for tests and evaluation of parts in space, the likelihood that an end-user will use those parts is very low,” he said, explaining that the existence of internationally-recognized testing standards could build confidence in this area, without much chance of ITAR issues cropping up.

Sept. 5, 2006 — Imago Scientific Instrument Corp., a provider of atom probe tomographic (APT) microscopes, announced the sale and installation of its Laser Pulse Module upgrade at the University of North Texas’ Materials Science and Engineering Group.

UNT purchased the original LEAP 3000 atom probe microscope from Imago in 2005. The LEAP 3000X microscope enables 3D structural and elemental composition of specimens with sub-nanometer resolution.

The LEAP 3000X allows users to analyze specimens with near-atomic resolution, offering key insights into how a material’s properties are affected at the macro level. Traditionally the tool has been utilized to analyze metallic samples, magnetic materials such as hard-drive read/write heads, and other electrically conductive specimens using its voltage-pulse mode. Upgrading the LEAP tool with the laser-pulse capability enables analysis of semiconductor and other high electrical resistance specimens.

Sept. 1, 2006 — Shimadzu Scientific Instruments announced its UV-3600 UV-VIS-NIR, a three detector spectrophotometer.

The company said its device delivers high-resolution spectroscopic analysis (185 nm – 3300 nm), virtually eliminating the low levels of sensitivity normally present in the near infrared light range. The company said its three-detector system maintains high-sensitivity throughout the range, without experiencing a dip between ultraviolet and near infrared.

“The high sensitivity in the 1000 to 1500 nm range is a key benefit of this instrument,” said Shannon Richard, spectroscopy product manager, in a prepared statement. “High sensitivity in that range enables researchers to examine phenomenon and material characteristics that would have been masked previously, due to poor sensitivity at the detector change over in older instruments.”

It’s not surprising that the world’s first nanocar would be invented by the Tour group. Jim Tour’s single-molecule nanocar made headlines late last year, not only in Nano Letters, where “Directional Control in Thermally Driven Single-Molecule Nanocars” was the single most-accessed paper in all American Chemical Society journals for the entire year, but in publications as diverse as The New York Times and Popular Mechanics.


Rice University Professor Jim Tour showed what can be accomplished when creativity is merged with perseverance. Photo courtesy of Rice University
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For a dubious public, a cool and easily understood gadget like the nanocar is just the thing to help explain why nanotechnology is potentially so useful. And the nanocar is a terrific test object for figuring out how to make molecules do what scientists and engineers want.

The nanocar earned Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry at Rice University and the director of the Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, an Innovation Award from Honda in 2005, as well as a Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society.

The Tour group spent eight years perfecting the techniques used to make the nanocar, which has a chassis and freely rotating axles made of well-defined organic groups, with wheels made of Buckyballs. The entire car measures three to four nanometers across, and 30,000 of them could park in the width of that ubiquitous human hair. The trickiest part was attaching the wheels without destroying the rest of the car.

The group has already followed up the nanocar paper with another describing a light-driven motorized nanocar. Their objective is the eventual development of nanomachines for bottom-up manufacturing, in much the same way that nature uses enzymes.

Tour also has made it his mission to demystify nanotechnology for kids His NanoKids educational outreach program expresses complex chemical and physical concepts in accessible, videogame-style tools, for grades 6 through 12. The idea came to him when his six-year-old started doodling arms and legs onto a sketch of an organic molecule. The units are being tested this year with 9,000 students in 28 middle schools.

Jim Balcom

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Jim Balcom is president and CEO of Polyfuel, Inc., a leader in engineered membranes for fuel cells. Under Balcom, the company has pushed the limits of fuel cell performance. Polyfuel recently scored a major contract with Johnson Matthey, a U.K. manufacturer of fuel cell catalysts and, in July 2006, achieved ISO 9001 certification.
Photo courtesy of Polyfuel

Dan Gamota

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Dan Gamota, director of Printed Electronics Platforms at Motorola, is the force behind a consortium of big and small companies and academic researchers working on printable electronics. He has made his own big company a leader in developing printed active displays, which merge microelectronics, electroluminescent ink and nanotechnology.
Photo courtesy of Motorola

Magnus Gittins

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Magnus Gittins serves as CEO of Advance Nanotech, Inc. The company invests in nanotech ventures. Advance Nanotech sponsors particular researchers and obtains the right to commercialize any inventions. One of the company’s first investments, in sensor maker Owlstone Nanotech, recently hired a CEO and announced its first customers.
Photo courtesy of Advance Nanotech

Pradeep Haldar

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Pradeep Haldar, professor of nanoengineering at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the State University of New York at Albany, has made it his mission to produce “industry-ready” graduates for the nanotech sector. He established his school’s Nanotechnology Management Program, nicknamed “Nano+MBA,” which enrolled its first students this year.
Photo courtesy of State University of New York at Albany

Go to any meeting sponsored by the NanoBusiness Alliance and you’ll see Sean Murdock in half a dozen places at once – introducing speakers, making sure things are running smoothly, and furiously hobnobbing in the hallways. His ubiquity is matched only by his enthusiasm and focus, both in conveying the commercial potential of nanotechnology and identifying the best ways to develop it. He does this all over the country, but particularly in Washington, D.C., where he has been the face of nanotechnology this year, as in recent ones.


Sean Murdock, executive director of the NBA, has been a ubiquitous force behind nano industry development. Photo courtesy of NanoBusiness Alliance
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Murdock has been immersed in the small tech world since 2000. That’s when he left consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he spent the first seven years of his business career, to found AtomWorks, an advocacy group devoted to developing micro and nanotechnology ventures in Illinois and the Midwest. In those early days it was a gamble compared to the security of a corporate gig, particularly for a dad of small children. But Murdock clearly thought it was a gamble worth taking.

He took the helm of the NanoBusiness Alliance, a national organization, in 2004. Since then he’s made it his business to educate representatives and senators about the importance of developing commercial nanotechnology in order to maintain U.S. competitiveness and to grow jobs. In February he took 50 of his organization’s members, many of them CEOs, to meet with legislators and to address the House Committee on Science. His activities have helped push forward at least two bills promoting nanotech investment. He also reached out to representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Murdock served on the nanotechnology working group of PECSEA, a subcommittee of the President’s Export Council, where he advocated for secure but trade-friendly export policies. As an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and as an advisory board member of Purdue University’s Discovery Park, he introduces the next generation of scientific and business leaders to the potential of nanotech.

Roger Grace

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Roger Grace, president of Roger Grace Associates, has been evangelizing for MEMS for decades and recently added nanotech to his portfolio. His strategic marketing firm has promoted work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sandia, Jenoptik, Seagate, HP and Zyvex, among others. He has served on many advisory boards and co-founded the Micro and Nanotechnology Commercialization Education Foundation (MANCEF).
Photo courtesy of Roger Grace Associates

Matthew Laudon

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Matthew Laudon, founder and executive director of the Nano Science and Technology Institute, specializes in academic-to-business relations. His organization’s efforts and shows have helped crystallize the nanotech sector on both the business and technical side, bringing together scientists, students, executives, engineers and more.
Photo courtesy of Nano Science and Technology Institute

Ellen McDevitt

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Ellen McDevitt, executive director, MEMS Industry Group (MIG), has grown her organization’s membership to more than 60 companies, from small start-ups to large corporations. She is also the organizing force behind the annual METRIC conference and the MEMS Executive Forum.
Photo by Roberto Borea

Skip Rung

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Robert D. “Skip” Rung, president and executive director of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), is largely responsible for Oregon’s lively micro and nano scene. ONAMI has pulled together research efforts at universities and government labs throughout the state and successfully marketed those shared R&D capabilities to organizations outside Oregon.
Photo courtesy of ONAMI

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR


September 1, 2006

This issue of Small Times marks many milestones. It marks the fifth anniversary of our initial print publication. It marks the fifth year we have unveiled our “Best of Small Tech” awards in these pages, and it marks our first anniversary with our parent company, PennWell Corporation.

It is gratifying to see the impact our awards program has had in such a short time. Recipients have come to take great pride in receiving the awards, and the awards themselves have come to be a good predictor of future achievement. I trust that you will enjoy reading about 2006’s winners, and that you will join me and the staff of Small Times in applauding their success.

I remember when we started these awards. At that time it was difficult to find a nanotech company that was successfully commercializing a product, and the MEMS sector was going through a brutal contraction. Today it is quite different. With all the work that has taken place over the past few years, it is much easier today to find good nominees – but perhaps more difficult to sort through and evaluate all of them.

To that end, while I congratulate our winners I would also like to thank all the panelists who made those evaluations possible by generously offering their time, energy and insights in evaluating the award nominees. All they get in return is their name printed in small type at the bottom of the page, but readers should know it takes a lot of work to get there.

As many of you know, the process begins with nominations that come in from our readers via an online form. The editorial staff culls through the nominations and sends them out to our panelists along with dossiers of additional information on the nominees. Panelists are asked to review the dossiers with an eye toward various criteria that gauge commercial impact, and rank their favorites. We then use these ranked responses in determining our final lists of winners and runners-up.

You will also see some more names on our masthead in both the contributing editor and guest contributor category. We have been ramping up our global network of writers, as well as working more closely with industry experts to get authoritative technical contributions.

As for that other milestone, we’ve come a long way since the inaugural issue of Small Times was published in September 2001. The amazing thing was that by the time I joined the team in April 2002, the publication was already very well known – a testament to the fact that it was serving a market need for information and analysis in micro and nanotechnology.

We have covered a lot of ground since then. As I noted earlier, September marks the first anniversary that the tiny startup of Small Times became part of PennWell, a diversified global media corporation with nearly a 100-year publishing history. Many of the improvements you see are the result of the wealth of resources now available to the Small Times team.

At the same time, much has remained the same. Looking back at that initial edition, you would find content that is still relevant today: a profile of the late Richard Smalley, Rice University’s legendary nanotechnologist; application notes about MEMS in athletic shoes and other nifty applications; and a cover story that sought to answer the question “why size matters.” In a way, Small Times has been answering that question ever since.

David Forman is editor-in-chief of Small Times. He can be reached at [email protected].

You could say Morinobu Endo is one of the fathers of the carbon nanotube. Even though he didn’t call his intellectual offspring by that name, he began working with carbon nanotubes and related materials in the mid-1970s, back when the “micro”-scale was still the latest thing. He published a seminal paper in 1976 that explained how to make them.


Morinobu Endo
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He’s been playing with them ever since, figuring out how to manufacture them more rapidly and cheaply and how to integrate them into useful objects. His research has resulted in ten-fold annual increases in the quantity of nanotubes that can be made with his process and also in vast quality-control improvements.

His publication list contains page after page of papers on various aspects of nanotube manufacturing with forays into application areas as well. One recent publication focused on using nanotubes in medical catheters. Without his work nanotubes might be just another carbon oddity rather than the intriguing and promising material they’ve become.

But Endo’s nanotubes might not have happened without the right sandpaper. Back in the 1970s, Endo was experimenting with making carbon deposits through chemical vapor deposition. To save time between experiments, he tried to clean the resulting soot off the substrate with sandpaper rather than washing it and drying it for two days. To his surprise the sanded substrate produced carbon fibers the next time it was used. But not always. Black silicon carbide paper didn’t yield anything, yet the fibers grew splendidly on a substrate treated with brown sandpaper containing iron oxide particles. Each tube had an iron oxide particle at one end. He realized it was a critical catalyst for forming the nanotubes. Endo later developed a more efficient method of seeding the substrate with iron oxide particles, which yielded a bumper crop of tubes. Unfortunately the technique was expensive – the tubes cost about $2,000 per kilo.


Morinobu Endo, professor of engineering at Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan, discovered key processes for making carbon nanotubes like the catalytic process shown here. Photos courtesy of Morinobu Endo
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The real manufacturing breakthrough came when Endo read a newspaper article about an influenza epidemic in Tokyo and the dangers of coming within range of a sneeze from an infected person. It occurred to him that the iron oxide nanoparticles were lighter than the flu viruses that floated so well in the air, and that the particles would suspend in air even better. It turned out that the floating particles produced nanotubes just fine and in much higher volume than previous methods. That development led to commercialization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes nicknamed “Endo fibers,” which are used in lithium-ion and lead acid batteries to prolong their lifetime.

An engineering professor at his alma mater, Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan, Endo today runs a research group whose work runs the gamut from basic science to applications. Not surprisingly the group’s work includes carbon nanotubes, new forms of carbon and graphite, nanoporous carbons, lithium-ion batteries and electric double-layer capacitors. He has authored or co-authored more than 40 textbooks and 250 papers in prestigious journals including Nature, Science and Physical Review. He chairs the Japan Carbon Society and serves on the advisory board of Carbon Journal. He has received a long list of awards and honors, both in Japan and internationally, including the 2004 American Carbon Society Medal.

SmallCo is a hypothetical start-up. It’s been in business for about six months but does not yet have a product to sell. It doesn’t even have a working prototype, but SmallCo has a great idea – it’s going to use nanoparticles to make the best widget possible.

SmallCo doesn’t work with any overseas companies on R&D, nor does it buy anything from foreign suppliers. It doesn’t give plant tours or use any outside contractors, not even a cleaning crew. It’s pretty safe to say that SmallCo doesn’t have any export control issues.

Yet. But even a minor change to SmallCo’s situation can have a substantial impact. Say SmallCo hires an H-1B visa holder to work in its R&D group or an S-1 visa holder on its engineering team. According to U.S. export controls, allowing a foreign national employee access to any of SmallCo’s product development or manufacturing technology, even when that person is authorized to work in the United States, is considered an export to the employee’s country of citizenship. SmallCo must now figure out what it must do to comply.

Hiring a foreign national is not the only way to trigger the applicability of export controls to your business, but for nano- and other high-tech start-ups, it is a key trigger.

An overview of U.S. export controls

American export controls regulate the worldwide transfer of U.S.-origin goods, services and technology. These controls also apply to technical assistance, technology transfers, services and other activities involving non-U.S. persons, including when technology is transferred to non-U.S. persons authorized to work in the United States.

Exports of commercial and “dual-use” items – commercial items that also have military applications – are generally subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), administered by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Exports of defense articles, including technology, are subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), administered by the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC). The EAR and ITAR treat the release within the United States of technology to a foreign national who is not a permanent resident as an export.

Minimizing risk

What should SmallCo do to minimize the risk of export control violations? The first step is to review the U.S. Munitions List (USML) and the Commerce Control List (CCL) to determine whether any of its technology is controlled under the ITAR or the EAR.

Think broadly – the technology that should be classified includes technology specific to the manufacture of SmallCo’s product, and it also includes technology for the use of its equipment, technology for the use of certain materials and technology for the disposal of certain materials. In some cases technology may be controlled because it is “capable of” doing “X,” even though SmallCo is using it for “Y.” Be sure to review all categories under both the USML and the CCL carefully in order to determine what licenses are needed.

Once SmallCo has done this, it should:

  • Determine which new hires are foreign nationals so licenses can be obtained as needed, based on the technology to which the individuals will need access.
  • Obtain any licenses necessary. While a license request is pending, ensure that the foreign national does not have access to any technical data requiring a license.
  • Ensure that all IT systems administrators are U.S. citizens or authorized to access all types of controlled technology that are maintained on the IT system. Restrict access to electronic files to only those who are authorized.
  • Develop procedures to store technical and hard copy data securely and out of sight of anyone “just passing through the facility.”
  • Provide periodic training to employees about export controls and how they apply to the business.

Hiring a foreign national may not be the only way nanotech startups will face export controls – but it is the most likely one. The measures identified in this article are important to ensure compliance with U.S. export controls no matter what triggered your need for compliance.

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SUSAN KOVAROVICS and WILLIAM CLEMENTS are partners in Foley & Lardner’s Washington, D. C., office and members of the White Collar Defense & Corporate Compliance practice. Ms. Kovarovics designs compliance programs and provides training on export and defense trade controls, trade sanctions, and anti-boycott matters. Mr. Clements counsels foreign and domestic parties regarding international business regulatory matters, particularly export controls, economic sanctions and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.