Integrated Family of Technologies

As a leader in the field of nanomaterials technologies, Nanophase has evolved from solely a producer of nanoparticles into an integrator of commercially scaled nanomaterial technologies focused on market and customer applications. Recognizing that new users to nanomaterials may experience learning curve difficulties incorporating Nanophase’s unique nanoparticles into processes or products, the Company has developed complementary nanotechnologies to offer a ‘solution’ approach for applications. The resultant integrated family of nanomaterial technologies forms Nanophase’s core intellectual property and proprietary knowledge. Nanophase Technologies currently owns or licenses 24 United States patents and patent applications, and 50 foreign patents and patent applications.

The properties of Nanophase nanoparticles are unique in many ways and, therefore, "new" to many customers. In order to demonstrate actual application performance and the advantages that nanomaterials technology can provide, it is necessary to sample customers with a variety of materials and work closely with them to optimize the products for their applications. Samples can be nanoparticles, or nanoparticles that are dry-coated, dispersed, size truncated, or wet-coated. Typically, Nanophase codevelops a nanosolution for an application with a customer to obtain an optimal nanoformulation and maximize customer value.

Nanophase Technologies Corporation manufactures a variety of nanocrystalline powders in commercial quantities. The nanocrystalline metal oxides typically have a mean particle size less than 100 nm, are non-porous single crystals, have defined surface chemistry, and are chemically pure. Further modification of these materials often involves vapor-phase coating to prepare a surface-modified dry powder, or liquid phase processing to prepare a dispersion that is compatible with the application. Nanophase’s family of integrated technologies economically produces nanocrystalline materials, and then nanoengineers those materials to fit a customer need.

Nanophase’s development process is designed to produce the most advantageous nanomaterials solution for an application. The foundation technologies are the patented Physical Vapor Synthesis (PVS) process and patent pending NanoArc^TM Synthesis (NAS) process. These processes use plasma energy to produce pure, non-agglomerated, non-porous, single-phase metal and mixed metal oxide nanoparticles at annual capacities measured in tens of thousands of kilograms per reactor. Nanoparticle size and surface chemistry can be tailored for applications as the nanomaterial is produced. Typical applications include zinc oxide for personal care, alumina for transparent ultra-abrasion resistant coatings and ultrafine polishing, and rare earth oxides for automotive catalysts and semiconductor chemical mechanical planarization.

Many customers are able to use the unprocessed nanopowders directly in their applications, but some cannot. Indeed, the ability to further process the nanoparticles to make them compatible with a particular customer application is a key to application performance and a cornerstone of the Nanophase family of integrated technologies. This is how Nanophase turns nanomaterials into nanoengineered products.