Nanotech Week: European News

A code of conduct for responsible nanosciences and nanotechnologies research

European Commission on Nanotechnology

7th February 2008

The COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES has drawn up a code of conduct for responsible nanosciences and nanotechnologies research. It was recognised “the need to foster synergies and cooperation between all nanosciences and nanotechnologies stakeholders, including the Member States, the Commission, academia, research centres, industry, financial bodies, non-governmental organisations and society at large.”

This ten page report is the result of concerns which have been raised over both nanotechnology and nanoscience. These concerns were made clear during a two day conference held at the Royal College of Surgeons (Please read Investing in Medical Nanotechnologies II - Review 7 December 2007) in November. There was confusion over varying definitions as to what are nanotechnology and nanoscience as well as “the risks of nanoparticles, products and technology”. One audience member had three different codes of conduct on his desk. All were unanimous in the need for a code of conduct.

From Qinetiq to Intrinsiq Via Brownian Dithering

Cientifica

25 Feb 2008

Finally, someone decided what to do with UK nanotech stalwart Qinetiq Nanomaterials. The new big idea is to change its name to Intrinsiq Materials and rebrand it as a company operating in the hitherto unheard of “Clean Tech and Wellness sector.”

After years operating on the edge of UK defence giant Qintetiq, the parent company has finally decided to pop in another five million pounds through Cody Gate Venture and appoint a new CEO who bears a startling resemblance to the one that they let go 18 months ago, something that seems to have been omitted from the rebuffed CV.

While all the rebranding of nanotech as Cleantech is fun to watch, is this the first company to actually change its name to remove the word ‘nano’?



Oxonica Goes Biotech

Cientifica

24 Feb 2008

While on the subject of rebranding former nanotech companies, Oxonica is now a biotech company according to the Oxford Mail. This is Money had a rather less flattering description of the company as a “Bombed-out industrial materials group” which announced that its fuel catalyst does work after all and that UK bus operator Stagecoach, who own some 4% of the company, would buy 750,000 pounds worth of the stuff.

While there is no doubt that fuel catalysts do have some effect, the variability of the results so far indicates that factors such as driving style, fuel and engine type also have some effect. The Stagecoach news doubled the market cap of the company, with their 750k adding something like 14 million pounds to the company’s worth, which shows how volatile things are down at the bottom end of the market.

Nanotech in the Desert, Six Years On

Tim Harper, Cientifica Ltd

Earlier in the month I popped over to Palm Springs to visit IBFs Nanotech Investing Forum.

Six years ago I gave a keynote speech at the first IBF Nanotechnology Investing Forum in which I gave my vision for the future of nanotechnology. My message was simple, “there is not, and there never will be a nanotechnology industry.” This was very bad news for all of the people who had staked their career and/or a few million dollars on profiting from the next industrial revolution and there was quite a debate about whether that view was rational or cynical.

At this years 7th annual NIF, which had shifted a few miles east to Indian Wells to see what had changed. Over dinner the night before the conference I was told by a couple of people not to say anything bad about the state of the nanotech industry “it’s hanging by a thread right now” was one remark that was repeated a few times, and a number of people remarked that if the Nanodynmics IPO failed then it was all over.

Well it did, and it isn’t. What I did notice was that while most VCs are stampeding in the direction of clean tech, there were plenty of good looking companies applying nanotech to a wide range of industries, and making money too. Fortunately, with the less choosy VCs out of the way there is no need for ridiculous valuations or draconian term sheets these days, making the event far more pleasant than many of the early ones where people were climbing over each other to ‘own’ the nanotech revolution.

Someone once described venture capitalists to me as carnivorous sheep. When an opportunity arises they all make a lunge for it at the same time and rip it, and each other to shreds in the feeding frenzy, then its on to the next one.

Events: Biopharmaceutical Nanotechnology

Biopharmaceutical Nanotechnology
Targeting Nanotech Developments in Drug Delivery, Discovery and Therapeutics to Enhance Your Commercial Business Strategies

March 31 - April 1, 2008 · The Café Royal, London, UK

With the EU Seventh Framework Programme contributing approximately €600 million per year to bionanotechnology developments until 2013 - can you really afford not to claim your stake in this multi million pound industry?

What will I gain?

There have been many opportunities globally to discuss the theory, but where are the practical, commercially applicable lessons learned by your peers? Whether you are new to nanotechnology or an industry expert, this event will empower you to:

• Stay competitive by applying the experience of key industry players who have used nanotechnology in the administration of drugs
• Discover how nanotechnology combines drugs and devices to increase your product efficiency
• Gain expert knowledge on the best ways to implement drug discovery techniques into your business processes
• Incorporate latest therapeutic developments into your product pipeline
• Enhance your commercial business strategies by employing the latest techniques discussed by the industry experts

Click here for a complete list of Biopharmaceutical Nanotechnology 2008 speakers

Register

Nanotech Week: European News

Colybris orders MEMS production systems from EV Group

Small Times

February 25, 2008

EV Group, which supplies MEMS and nanotech manufacturing equipment has received a multiple system order from Colibrys, a Swiss MEMS sensor supplier.

This follow-on order is for one EVG520 semiautomated wafer bonding system and two EVG620 fully automated mask/bond aligners.

One bonder and aligner tool set was installed at the Colibrys manufacturing facility in Stafford, Texas in January, while the other will be installed at the company's headquarters in Neuchatel, Switzerland before the end of the first quarter of 2008.

Follow-on orders like this helped EVG realize a 30 percent overall increase in both revenue and order intake in 2007, the company announced in a news release.


Steinmeyer's new manipulator stage targets nano, micro

Small Times

February 25, 2008

Steinmeyer Inc. has released its new high precision micro manipulator stage, MT 130-50-DC, geared toward nanotechnology, metrology, biomedical, and robotics applications.

Manufactured from high strength anodized aluminum, the standard table offers travel of 50 mm with positioning accuracy of 10 µm (micrometer), straightness/flatness runout of +/- 1µm and repeatability of +/- 1µm. With a sleek low profile design, it has a square footprint of 130 mm x 130 mm, height of 43 mm and weighs only 1.8 kg, the company announced in a news release.

Features include reloaded cross roller bearings, precision ground ball screw, limit switches, and integrated dc motor with rotary encoder. This product can be provided as a XY stage and can also be configured as a XYZ system-model MP 130-50-DC as a further enhancement. Motors, encoders and cabling are all hidden inside the table's body.

Motor, limit switch and encoder interface are via SUB-D connectors located in a single area. This stage is suited for semiconductor metrology, biomedical, miniature robotics, and laser industry applications, the company says.

Casting a long line, A new way of making seriously long, seriously thin fibres

The Economist (print edition)

Feb 14th 2008

TINY fibres, a ten-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair, can be used to produce materials with novel electrical, optical and mechanical properties—at least in theory. But before engineers are able to turn them into practical applications, such nanofibres (which have a width of a few nanometres, or billionths of a metre) need to be fabricated into wires, strips, tubes and other components. That, in turn, means making them reliably and in large quantities. And a new production method developed by Min-Feng Yu and his colleagues at the University of Illinois may make this possible.

At the moment nanofibres are made in a variety of ways, none of which is entirely satisfactory. One uses condensation and evaporation, and is rather like some of the steps employed to make the fine structures on silicon chips. Screen-printing techniques are also being developed for some materials. A third trick relies on a system known as electrospinning, which dates back to the 1930s. In this, an electrically charged syringe squirts a polymer mixed with a solvent towards an oppositely charged electrode. The voltage difference causes a jet of the solution to stream from syringe to electrode. On the way, the solvent evaporates and the fibre solidifies. The technique works well enough, but the fibre that piles up on the receiving electrode tends to break up on arrival. It can end up looking like a plate of spaghetti.

By comparison, the fibres made by Dr Yu are nice and straight—and also astonishingly long. Most nanofibres are only nanometres in length as well as width, but the longest one made by Dr Yu stretches for half a metre—and he only stopped there because he got fed up with winding it up on a spool only a few millimetres in diameter. In theory, his method should be able to produce nanofibres of any length.

That method relies, like electrospinning, on dissolving the stuff that is to become the fibre in a solvent. The tip of a micropipette 100 nanometres in diameter is used to draw up the beginning of the thread and pull it across a surface on which it can dry. As the solvent evaporates, what is left behind solidifies. After that, it is simply a question of reeling in the prey. As long as the thread does not break, it can be drawn. And by moving the pipette both horizontally and vertically it is possible to make three-dimensional patterns with more structure than a bowl of spaghetti. That means component-manufacture should be possible.

According to Dr Yu, his method will produce fibres at the rate of 3mm a second, which bodes well for turning it into an industrial process. It should thus provide an economical way of making nanofibres from a variety of materials, provided only that those materials are soluble in something that evaporates reasonably fast.

It should also allow some novel nanofibres to be produced for researchers to experiment with. One possibility Dr Yu foresees is to incorporate fibres into materials such as blocks of plastic, and then dissolve them away to create tiny channels through which fluids could flow. That would make so-called labs-on-a-chip, which are used for some sorts of chemical analysis, easier to fabricate. Another idea would be to make those embedded fibres from pairs of materials which, when laid together within a substance, may be made to react together to produce a composite with useful electrical or mechanical properties. And, if all else fails, at least it makes an entertaining alternative to fishing.

Nanotech Week European Finance News

Small Times

D-Wave secures $17M Series C for quantum computing

February 4, 2008

D-Wave Systems, developer of quantum computers targeted at commercial applications, has announced the closing of a $17 million Series C financing. The round was led by International Investment and Underwriting (IIU) of Dublin, Ireland and was strongly supported by existing investors. D-Wave will use the funds for product development, operations and business development activity.

Our vision is to make quantum computing power available globally and to accomplish this requires a network of international partners," said D-Wave CEO Herb Martin.

D-Wave is the first company to announce the development of a commercial quantum computer and has twice publicly demonstrated prototype systems running real-world applications, the company said.

The D-Wave machine is intended to be deployed as a co-processor, which will provide acceleration to applications executing on classical digital computer systems.

D-Wave's system will be available for on-line access in early 2009 and will be useful for accelerating high value applications involving discrete optimization, pattern matching, machine learning and constrained search with preferences. Such applications are found throughout the operations research, life sciences, finance, travel, chemical and petrochemical industries. Applications in quantum simulation and electronic design automation will follow soon thereafter, the company said.

The latest financing round was fully subscribed by existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), GrowthWorks Capital Ltd, BDC Venture Capital, Harris & Harris, bcIMC and Pender Fund.

PSivida's pSiNutria business sold to Intrinsiq

January 25, 2008

pSivida Ltd. (Nasdaq: PSDV), a nanotech-based drug delivery company, has sold the assets of its wholy owned subsidiary, pSiNutria Ltd., to Intrinsiq Materials, a U.K.-based venture capital backed company.

pSiNutria was established in December 2005 to develop applications of the company's BioSilicon technology for the food industry.
As part of the deal, Intrinsiq will make a series of payments totalling $1.23 million in the first year following this closing of the transaction, then about $3.9 million over the next six years.

Protagen raises $1.5M to expand protein biochip unit

January 23, 2008

Protagen AG has announces the closing of an interim financing round of €1 million (about $1.5 million) to expand the company's protein biochips business unit.

The capital raised in this round has come from existing institutional investors, MIG AG and Co KG Beteiligungsfonds 3, Munich, and S-Venture Capital Dortmund GmbH, as well as from a new investor, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). This latest funding brings the total amount of venture capital financing raised by Protagen since 2004 to €5.3 million (about $7.8 million).

The UNIchip protein biochip range was launched onto the market in September 2005, and has experienced increasing demand from biotech and pharmaceutical companies, the company said in a news release.

MEMSCAP's Q407 earnings report reveals sustained profitability

January 21, 2008

France-based MEMS technology provider MEMSCAP has announced its earnings for the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2007. Among the main achievements reported are:

• Highest quarterly revenue in U.S. dollars of the whole group history;
• Profitability over nine consecutive months;
• Second quarter in a row of operational profitability;
• IntuiSkin annual revenue multiplied by four year to year.

Events: 3rd International Conference on Nanotechnology and Smart Textiles for Industry, Healthcare and Fashion

19 March 2008, Royal Society, London

Find out about the latest innovations being used to bring imaginative, exciting and novel properties to textiles for fashion and industry. These range from scent-embedded textiles, stay-clean textiles, textiles with displays and textiles that can change colour, to lightweight textiles that are so strong they can withstand the impact of a bullet.

For more information visit www.nano.org.uk/events or contact gemma.mcculloch@nano.org.uk