Congrats to MaRS client, Vive Nano, the recipient of nearly $3.8 million from the Ontario government! The Toronto-based company uses an environmentally friendly process to create nanotechnology-based products.
The investment, issued through the Innovation Demonstration Fund, will help Vive Nano build a pilot plant to expand R&D and increase production. The plant is expected to create 19 new jobs for chemists, technicians and engineers over the next two years.
Using biotech solutions to create clean technologies is not something new. We have been hearing about Organic LED (OLED) light, and bacteria that produce energy for a while now. There are several companies producing biofuel using genetically modified algae or bacteria, and organic photovoltaic (OPV) is getting closer to becoming a viable technology.
The novelty here is using viruses to build lithium batteries. According to NPR Health & Science, MIT researcher Angela Belcher has figured out a way to build iron phosphate scaffolds within a carbon tube using viruses.
As it does every year, the Tokyo Nano Tech Expo has started the nanotech conference season off with an impressive event.
Japan’s nano tech 2009 conference covers the entire nano marketplace and creates a place where big worldwide players in this space can meet at Tokyo Big Sight by concurrently holding five related industry-specific exhibitions:
Will hamsters spawn the next cleantech movement?
As reported in this week’s Technology Review, a research team led by Zhong Lin Wang of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech have developed for the first time a nanogenerator that can be driven by irregular, low-energy biomotion, including the tapping of a human finger and a hamster’s erratic running and scratching.
Who's the real dummy?
Over the past decade, nanotechnology has enjoyed a lot of attention from the research and industry communities. That seems to be changing.
According to the latest Lux Research Report: “Nanomaterials State of the Market Q1 2009: Cleantech’s Dollar Investments, Penny Returns”, nanotechnology is becoming mainstream. The industry will slowly stop using the term “nano” as a marketing tool, as it will be part of most products on the market. More, the “Nanophobia” in both in the industry’s and in consumers’ minds, resulting from the recent focus on nano-material Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) has convinced manufacturers that it might not be worth taking the chance.
