Tag Archives: Small Times Magazine

Feb. 8, 2006 – NaturalNano Inc., a Rochester, N.Y., company whose primary business is discovering, refining, and marketing naturally occurring nanomaterials, announced today members of its scientific advisory board.

The board’s purpose is to inform and guide NaturalNano’s management and technical teams on relevant nanotechnology research, development, validation and evaluation in the global marketplace. The board includes Robert Corkery of Ytkemiska Institute AB-Institute for Surface Chemistry in Stockholm, Emmanuel Giannelis of Cornell University and Raymond Kurzweil of Kurzweil Technologies.

Feb. 7, 2006 – Ener1 Inc. announced that Marshall Cogan has joined the lithium battery and fuel cell company’s board of directors.

Cogan was recently named senior strategic advisor of Ener1’s majority shareholder, private equity firm Ener1 Group. Cogan founded Foamex International and grew its automotive operations in North America for ten years. He later acquired control of Sheller Glober, the world’s largest manufacturer of steering wheels and related automotive components at the time. Later in his career, he founded United Auto Group, which originally went public and was later sold to Roger Penske.

Feb. 7, 2006 – Nucryst Pharmaceuticals announced that its Acticoat Moisture Control with Silcryst nanocrystals has received European Design Examination Certificate regulatory approval.

The product, which was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada in 2005, will be available in Europe commencing March 1, 2006. Acticoat Moisture Control was developed in collaboration between Smith & Nephew and Nucryst Pharmaceuticals and will be sold by Smith & Nephew as part of its Acticoat product line.

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Feb. 6, 2006 – Gajus Worthington knew three years ago that he needed to find a manufacturing site for Fluidigm Corp. The San Francisco Bay-area company had already released its first generation microfluidic biochip for analyzing proteins and was poised to ramp up production.

Worthington, Fluidigm’s co-founder and chief executive officer, eliminated San Francisco quickly. It offered a skilled workforce but its costs were too high. He explored the possibility of Boston, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, the UK and Europe and found them lacking.

At the prompting of a board member, he contacted the Economic Development Board in Singapore. He was well acquainted with the tiny nation; in a previous position at Actel Corp. he helped set up a fab to make integrated circuits.

“I worked closely with the folks in Singapore,” he said. “It turned out to be our best fab, with the highest yields, and it came up quickly.”

That was one reason that Worthington decided to place the company’s first commercial plant in Singapore. Fluidigm became the first company to open a biochip fab in Singapore last fall. It is expected to be an anchor for Singapore’s developing medical technology industry.

Fluidigm plans to use the state-of-the-art fab for making chips based on its soft lithography techniques. The new fab takes advantage of Singapore’s expertise in semiconductor processes, according to BEH Swan Gin, director of the Singapore Economic Development Board’s biomedical sciences group. Fluidigm also fits into the nation’s goal to build a knowledge-based, high tech economy.

“Fluidigm is recognized as one of the most innovative companies in the biomedical field,” Gin said in an e-mail interview. “Its products address the needs of biomedical researchers, which lead to synergies with Singapore’s growing base of drug discovery and other biomedical research.”

Fluidigm will invest more than $23 million in the facility. The company likely will be eligible for economic breaks or incentives, although neither Worthington nor Gin would provide details. Fluidigm already had received venture capital funding in 2004 through an investment fund managed by the Economic Development Board.

Grace Yow, Fluidigm’s general manager in Singapore, located the fab in a former semiconductor facility vacated by a company that had moved to China. “We could almost move in and start,” Worthington said.

Worthington expects to begin production of Topaz, which the company promotes as a fast and simple biochip system for research or drug discovery, in the Singapore site. Eventually the fab may produce Fluidigm’s latest product line, dubbed Dynamic Array Integrated Fluidic Circuits.

The arrays are high-throughput devices that can detect DNA in low concentrations — what Worthington terms “needle in a haystack problems.” The arrays could be used for clinical applications or for cancer detection. The California office will continue to conduct all research and development.

Fluidigm may get more than a quality fab in a welcoming country that offers a trained workforce. Being part of Singapore’s biotech cluster will allow it to rub shoulders with what may be the makers of the next blockbuster products. Early collaborations could lead to lucrative business opportunities in the future. “That’s an added benefit,” Worthington said.

Feb. 6, 2006 — BioForce Nanosciences Inc. shareholders voted Jan. 27 on a merger with Silver River Ventures Inc. The companies said the merger received formal approval with the substantial majority of shareholders voting in support.

With approvals in place the merger is expected to proceed to a formal closing expected to take place within the next few weeks. In anticipation of the closing, Silver River has changed its name to BioForce Nanosciences Holdings Inc. The companies said that closing the merger marks the initiation of a new round of funding.

BioForce Nanosciences has patented and patent-pending technology and products for ultramicro- and nanoscale placement and patterning of active biomolecules and other materials. The technology is embodied in the NanoArrayer System, a proprietary instrumentation/software platform.

Feb. 3, 2006 – Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. (NASDAQ: ALTI) announced that its facility in Anderson, Ind., has begun manufacturing and testing the first batch of lithium ion battery cells made utilizing its nano-structured electrode materials.

The company says its Anderson facility is a rapid design, prototyping and applications lab for high power, lithium ion cells, batteries and battery packs. In the latest testing of its nano-structured battery cells, Altairnano says it demonstrated that 90 percent of room temperature charge retention has been achieved at minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Feb. 2, 2006 — Novavax Inc., a Malverne, Pa., developer of products using micellar nanoparticle and other technologies, announced the appointment of Rick Bright to the newly created position of vice president of vaccine research. Bright will report to Rahul Singhvi, president and CEO.

Most recently, Bright was at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention in Atlanta where he worked in the influenza branch of the strain surveillance section as an immunologist and virologist and where he served as team leader of the antiviral drug program.

Previously he held the position of senior research scientist and project manager, vaccine and immunology programs at Altea Therapeutics, a biotech startup company in Atlanta, where he directed the development of a new generation of vaccines and improved delivery methods for vaccines.

Feb. 1, 2006 — New Balance Performance Outerwear, a licensee of New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc., has teamed with Nano-Tex to offer a new, vintage-inspired Circa V outerwear line. New Balance unveiled the Circa V collection at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market Show, which ended Tuesday in Salt Lake City. The line will be available at retail stores starting in fall 2006.

The line features Nano-Tex Outdoor, a durable water repellency treatment. The technology makes cotton and synthetic fabrics liquid-repellent and stain-resistant. Nano-Tex is headquartered in Emeryville, Calif.

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Feb. 1, 2006 – Despite changes afoot at their troubled semiconductor division, researchers at Dutch multinational Philips Electronics continue to develop technology that will enable the next generation of chips. They are among a handful of companies using nanoscale components to make transistors ever smaller.

“Historically the semiconductor roadmap has always been about more Moore,” said Ronald Wolf, group leader at Philips Research, referring to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. Moore predicted that chips would need to continually shrink to meet consumer demand. “Today, instead, we’re looking at more than Moore, trying to equip silicon with added functionality.”

At the base of this development are nanowires. Nanowires appear to be a frontrunner for replacing conventional CMOS technology, said Leo Kouwenhoven, a professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology and a Philips research partner. Philips Electronics is not alone in its quest: Multinationals such as Intel, IBM and Infineon also have nano initiatives.

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Philips researchers deposit gold particles onto a silicon substrate that act as seed particles out of which nanowires made of semiconductor material like gallium arsenide or indium phosphide are grown. “The beauty of our process,” said Philips Research’s Erik Bakker, “is that it finally enables us to integrate the superior electrical and optical properties of these expensive non-silicon semiconductors with mature and cheap silicon technology.”

Wolf said that multifunctional capability may allow Philips to make smaller and faster chips as well as new types of biosensors and more efficient lighting — the company’s sole focus when it was founded in 1891. Light-emitting wires on a chip could distribute the clock frequency optically instead of electrically, enabling much faster processors. They demonstrated in a Science article published last year that they could make superconducting transistors as well. These accomplishments are feasible on an industrial scale, Wolf and Kouwenhoven said, but not for another 10 years.

Charles Harris, chief executive officer of the publicly traded venture capital firm Harris & Harris Group, pointed out that not every application is a decade away. Harris and Harris invests solely in micro and nanotechnology companies. “You have, for example carbon nanotubes in the bumpers of General Motors’ cars,” he said. “And there is Nanomix, a company we have an investment in, that is employing nanotubes in a sensor device that you can already purchase.”

Nanosys, another company backed by Harris & Harris, has been working on commercial applications for nanostructures since its founding in 2001. Nanosys co-founder Stephen Empedocles said, “We don’t look at anything that far (10 years) out. We have products that we are projecting for market introduction in the next 12 to 18 months.”

Harris said the differing timeframes are typical in industry. “Big multinationals are thinking about nanotechnology first and foremost from a defensive point of view, as they should. They have their leading market position to lose, while startup companies have nothing to lose, everything to win.”

Nanosys targets similar applications as Philips, as well as solar cells, memory chips and fuel cells. Instead of looking at single-wire devices, Nanosys produces ink consisting of billions of nanowires that its engineers coat onto a surface by a low-cost roll-to-roll process. “In a way, it’s like cheap coatable silicon,” Empedocles said. “Our technology allows you to create thin-film transistors with electronic characteristics that you would normally only find in crystalline silicon wafers.”

Empedocles said single-wire electronics have limitations. “How (do you) place the hundreds of billions of wires right where you need them to form an electronic circuit?” he said. “In our case, we don’t really worry where those transistors are because they’re everywhere and the circuit is where you apply the electrodes.”

Ideally, a single-wire circuit would assemble itself, but current self-assembly processes can only be used for simple structures such as thin films, Kouwenhoven said. That is one reason for Philips’ 10-year development projection.

Philips researchers may not have the luxury of time, though. Last September, the company announced that weak demand had prompted it to consider restructuring its semiconductor division. In mid-December, Philips announced that it planned to break out the semiconductor division, a move that could position the semiconductor group for a sale or merger.

Feb. 1, 2006 — NEC Electronics Corp., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. said today that they will jointly develop technology to make system large-scale integrated circuits with the precision of 45 nanometers.

Since such technology requires enormous amounts of funding and other resources, the three will collaborate to enhance the efficiency of their technical innovation work by joining forces, the partners said.