NanoMech Poised For Product Launch
by March 13, 2006 12:00 am 61 views
NanoMech LLC, a Fayetteville innovator of nanoparticle-based coatings and the application process of those coatings, was recently given the 2005 Award for Excellence in Technology by global consulting firm Frost & Sullivan of San Antonio, Texas.
The award is in the field of “advanced coatings, surface technologies and spray coatings.” Frost & Sullivan annually recognizes companies whose technology is expected to make “significant contributions to the industry in terms of adoption, change, and competitive posture.”
“It’s a real feather in the cap for us,” said Bob Fink, the company’s business development officer.
NanoMech, a client of Virtual Incubation Corp. of Fayetteville, has won eight Small Business Innovation Research awards worth $1.9 million since it began in 2002.
The company is researching ways to apply nanoparticle-based coatings to medical implants, cutting tools, and microelectronics. Fink said the coatings have a variety of application benefits including the potential to control infection in medical applications as well as anti-corrosion and lubrication in industrial tools.
The Frost & Sullivan award is for NanoMech’s technique in applying a coating to cutting tools, using a spray of particles in powder form under an electric field, which helps determine the coating’s thickness. The coating — cubic boron nitride coined NanoTuff by the company — is the second hardest material known to exist next to diamonds, Fink said.
The company is working to release NanoTuff and a solid lubricant called NanoGlide in the fourth quarter, he said. Both will be the first commercial products the company has made.
Ajay Malshe, NanoMech’s chief technology officer and an engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, said he sees the United States as a forerunner in nanotechnology and he’d like to keep it that way.
“You can send information via satellite,” Malshe said of the outsource trend in some industries, “but you can’t send nanoparticles over satellite.”
NanoMech licenses technology from the UA, and Fink said the company is working on patents for some of the equipment it uses to apply its coatings.