nanoREV.

Samsung/Unidym extend joint development of carbon nanotube display

Many of the proposals for carbon nanotubes implementation in display applications have taken advantage of nanotubes capability to act as electron emitting materials for field emission displays. An alternative use of carbon nanotubes for displays is as a replacement for the transparent electrode materials such as ITO used in liquid crystal display manufacturing. A collaboration between Samsung and Unidym, both of which are industry leaders in carbon nanotube manufacturing and applications, seems to be directed in this second direction.  The use of carbon nanotubes as transparent electrodes may be a strong step toward the development of flexible displays useful for E-paper under development by companies such as E-Ink and Sipix Imaging.

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Government prize for nanotechnology innovations

Recently congressmen Dan Lipinski and Todd Akin introduced H.R. 6661 to establish an award program for innovations in nanotechnology. While government investment in nanotechnology is nothing new in the form of grants, this type of award seems more result-oriented as opposed to an investment in basic research and is similar to Senator John McCain’s call for an award for a leapfrog improvement in battery technology. According to the bill the areas of focus include nanotechnology applications involving:

(1) Improvement of the environment, consistent with the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry of the Environmental Protection Agency.

(2) Development of alternative energy that has the potential to lessen the dependence of the United States on fossil fuels.

(3) Improvement of human health, consistent with regulations promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services.

(4) Development of consumer products.

(5) Advancement in the field of nanoelectronics.

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Nano-Proprietary (Applied Nanotech) v. Canon Update

Carbon nanotubes and related carbon-based nanostructures/thin films are of particular interest as electron emission materials for flat panel display devices and have been the focal point for some litigation. In this article the litigation between Nano-Proprietary and Canon concerning the licensing of surface emission display technology is reviewed. In a recent decision by the U.S. Appeals Court for the 5th Circuit the court determined that due to the “irrevocable and perpetual” non-exclusive licences granted by Nano-Proprietary to Canon the license agreement stands despite earlier shenanigans between Canon and Toshiba. The decision also provides Canon’s restructured subsidiary SED with use of the licensed patents. Applied Nanotech Holdings (formerly Nano-Proprietary) has downplayed the importance of the decision in a press release.Â

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Suspended Graphene Shows Ballistic Promise

In a recent article posted as an Advance Online Publication of Nature Nanotechnology, researchers from Rutgers provide even more support of graphene’s promise in future nano devices.  The researchers compared electronic properties of suspended graphene (SG) –that is, graphene held between two electrodes and not physically in contact with a substrate–against that of nonsuspended graphene (NSG) in which the devices are formed using conventional layered etching techniques.  The reason for “suspending” graphene over, and not in physical contact with the substrate was to eliminate electronic traps normally found in an oxide or at the interface between graphene and the gate-oxide.  By reducing the trapped-charge density, the researchers increased the free-charge density–and hence sought to increase the carrier mobility.   Hence, they could then study the intrinsic transport properties near the Dirac point, which tends to be a difficult range to measure since charge carrier density virtually disappears (i.e. if there’s normally not enough carriers to measure, how do you measure them?).

The researchers concluded that the experiments provide strong evidence of near ballistic transport (i.e., mainly non-scattered transport), which is a step in the right direction for the use of graphene in future, advanced electronics.

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Basic patent to nanoparticle drug delivery issued to NanoDel

NanoDel is a German company involved in the development of nanoparticles for drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier. Researchers from NanoDel have contributed to the scientific investigation of nanoparticles for drug delivery for over a decade and have just recently received a fairly basic patent to the use of polyalkylcyanoacrylate nanoparticles for administering DNA.

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HP plans nanoscale RRAM by 2009

Last week researchers at Hewlett-Packard indicated that their nanoscale crossbar arrays may see commercialization as early as next year in ultra high density non-volatile memory. While the initial research into nanoscale crossbar technology was performed by Stan Williams and Phil Kuekes in the late 1990’s, the recent discovery of the “memristor“ characterized as a fourth fundamental circuit component and having both the properties of a resistor and a memory storage element has apparently propelled crossbar technology to the fast track. While presently looking toward non-volatile memory as the main application there have been hints of applications in other areas such as programmable logic and neural networks which may contribute to a merge between software and hardware (i.e. morphware) which underlies present trends in reconfigurable programming and artificial intelligence. One thing HP may need to watch out for is competitors such as Samsung which already has a dominating position in the non-volatile memory market as well as a patent application claiming a competing version of HP’s memristor.�

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The decline of venture capital and the rise of patent markets

So far 2008 has set a 30 year record for a minimum number of venture backed IPO’s (5 in the first quarter and none in the second quarter). Meanwhile a consortium of large technology companies including Verizon, Google, Cisco, HP, and Ericsson have banded together to create Allied Security Trust (AST) which joins the likes of Intellectual Ventures and Ocean Tomo to create a market for patents (although with clearly different goals in mind). But how will these developments effect nanotechnology ventures? Read the rest of this entry »

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Extension of Rice University’s CNT Patent Portfolio

Due to the groundbreaking work of Richard Smalley in the fabrication of fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, Rice University has obtained some pretty broad patent protection for carbon nanotubes over the past few years. The majority of the basic carbon nanotube patents from Rice have so far focused on single walled carbon nanotubes, which are the most pristine form of carbon nanotubes and occur in two basic types - conductive and semiconductive - making them attractive for future electronics applications. However, in the nearer term many applications of carbon nanotubes are appearing that use the multi-walled variety of carbon nanotubes rather than the single walled variety. While multi-walled CNTs are not available as semiconductors in many cases they can be easier to fabricate and less fragile than single-walled CNTs and more suitable for applications wherein electrical or thermal conduction is most important such as field emission displays, thermal cooling, and flexible electrodes.

Recently, some patents have issued based on continuation patent applications that have broadened Rice’s basic patents beyond single walled CNTs to cover “fullerene nanotubes”. For example

US Patent 7,390,477 (priority March 7, 1997) -

Claim 1 -  A composition of matter comprising at least about 99% by weight of fullerene nanotubes.

US Patent 7,390,767 (priority March 7, 1997) -

Claim 1 -  A method for producing a catalyst support comprising: (a) providing a plurality of fullerene nanotubes; (b) contacting an end of at least some of the fullerene nanotubes of the plurality with at least one catalytic metal; and (c) activating the catalytic metal.

While originating from Rice University it is likely that these patents fall under the control of Unidym due to their merger with Carbon Nanotechnologies.

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Flexible Electronics and Display Conference 2009

The US Display Consortium recently announced the addition of a business investment summit to their annual conference on flexible electronics and displays. So far much of the interest and activity in nanotechnology has been weighted toward the study of basic nanomaterial properties rather than new applications and even when applications are proposed for nanomaterials these applications usually focus on an improvement of a property of an existing technology (e.g. higher mechanical strength, better electrical conductivity, etc.) rather than the enablement of a new technology. In contrast, flexible electronics is one area in which nanomaterials may actually be essential for enablement. This recent article by Stefan Preisler and Gerd Lange describes how semiconducting polymers, carbon nanotubes, and silicon nanowires may play a significant role as the “inks” for traditional printing tools such as inkjet printing and roll-to-roll coating used in enabling such flexible electronics.

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Nano-FETs Patent Interferences

The semiconductor and electronics industry has a serious problem when it comes to patent thickets in which a multitude of different corporations or other patent holding entities each have overlapping patents related to different components of a particular product making commercialization difficult. Nanotechnology patents share and may even amplify this problem due to the cross-disciplinary nature of certain nanomaterials and the relatively large fraction of university held nanotechnology patents for which cross-licensing strategies may be moot since universities do not usually generate products and thus are not subject to infringement of a corporations patents.

One particularly interesting example of overlapping patents relevant to future nanoelectronics is the case of US Patent 6,740,910 held by Infineon Technologies and US Patent 6,566,704 held by Samsung Electronics. Both these patents deal with basic vertical channel FET designs in which nanowire of nanotube material form the channel portions. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors nanowires and/or nanotubes are likely to start appearing in transistor designs by 2012 and the vertical channel design may potentially be the last hurrah for MOSFET transistors which currently dominates electronics. Infineon’s patent (filed Jan. 28 2003 in the U.S. and covering both carbon nanotube and nanowire channels) appears to have the broader patent claims to this design but Samsung’s patent (limited to carbon nanotubes) has the earlier U.S. filing date (June 27, 2001). During the U.S. examination Samsung’s patent was initially used against Infineon’s patent application but Infineon was able to claim earlier foreign priority to July 28, 2000.  Lacking an interference proceeding it is unclear as to whether Infineon or Samsung has ultimate priority but, if the incorporation of nanowires and nanotubes into transistor structures becomes a necessity to maintain Moore’s law, it is likely that one or both of Infineon and Samsung will be in a fairly powerful position in the next decade.�

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