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Commercial Success with Nanomaterials

Professor Helmut Schmidt, nanomaterials expert and entrepreneur, describes how commercial
success can be achieved through enhancing existing products.

Nanotechnology is already making a major impact on the development of new materials. Many market
forecasts show a dramatic increase in commercial pro-ducts based on materials whose properties are
derived from the nano scale. Two major areas of growth have been identified - medical technologies
and functional materials, plus also some structural materials like nanoparticle reinforced polymers.
However, looking at the industrial and commercial reality, there still is a big gap between the
advantages of nanomaterials, and their commercial application. In the case of medical applications,
there may be a long, and in many cases an unpredictable time to market; in the case of functional and
structural materials, the payback mechanisms and times can be very complex and require specific
industrial structures.

Materials, as a rule, represent the first (and lowest benefit) level in the value added chain that goes from
chemical synthesis to the end product. In general, the time to market can be 10 or more years,
accompanied by high development costs. Return on investment, for example, in the chemical industry is
obtained through large volume sales into large volume markets. One example is titanium dioxide
nanoparticles used in sun creams. However, these kinds of applications are the exception rather than the
rule. For this reason, the overall nanomaterial sales from the chemical industry are still marginal. Niche
markets are covered by hundreds of small companies, mainly spin-offs from scientific institutions.
Products for these niche markets may bring in reasonable profits, but despite many predictions, they have
not led to any remarkable turnovers, and most companies stay at the level of a few tens of employees.
Considering the various stages of the value added chain. Each processing step to the final product leads
to an added value of about 10 to 100 times of the value gained by the sale of the novel material alone. To
obtain sufficient market size and benefit in low nanomaterial volume applications, the fabrication of
components from these materials is essential. This, however, immediately leads into an interdisciplinary
situation, where nano materials chemists, nano materials scientists, product development experts and
high throughput fabrication techniques need to be combined. This approach, surprisingly, still seems to
be very high barrier for the average nanomaterial small company to overcome.
Surface Technologies as a Vehicle for Gaining Added Value in Nano Materials Applications
For surface technologies, the materials market (except mass commodity paints, for example, in
automotive and architectural applications - domains occupied traditionally by chemical industry) are
especially low. Customized surface technologies specifically tailored for end products, however, are
generally not within the scope of chemical industry. But, the added value possible through products that
incorporate tailor-made and customized surface technologies can be very high indeed, and the potential
markets also large. Industries in question include the metal and plastic processing industries, which are
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very often SMEs, and large companies needing niche products for their systems, such as the IT, camera
and computer industries, the automotive and other transportrelated industries, cookware and other
household product industries. The market sizes add up to several 100 of millions of US$. Only a small
percentage of these industries are willing or able to build up a nanomaterial based, wet chemical surface
techno-logical process within their own production lines. The vast majority are interested in the final
product, but not interested in using unfamiliar technologies within their production processes. For this
Reason, the complete, surface finished product, customized to the customers needs, has to be
manufactured for these companies.
Nano Material Based Surface Technologies the Commercial Endgame
It would take too much space to summarize all the numerous important innovations in materials from
nano science and technology. For example there are photo catalytic surfaces based on nano TiO2,
transparent hard coatings for protecting optical systems made from plastic, refractive index-tailored
coatings made by wet chemical techniques, low surface-free energy coatings for easy-to-clean surfaces,
and anti-microbial coatings based on tailor made silver colloids with controlled release behaviour.
Particularly in the area of hard coatings and easy to clean coatings, there are many products are on the
market that can be applied to plastic or textile surfaces. However, the real breakthrough in
commercialisation is still in its infancy. The most important reason for this is the lack of what might be
called vertical interdisciplinarity, (vertical in this case means down to the market) which links together
chemical synthesis, materials science and production engineering. The innovation potential of this is
extremely high, but needs to be exploited by a new and appropriate business approach.
The Production Oriented Development Approach of EPG
EPG Inc., founded in June 2006, has developed its own value added business model, based on
nanomaterial products, in two specific fields: nanomaterial-based surface technologies deposited by wet
coating techniques, and materials and services for oil and gas production the latter through applying a
technology which makes use of a very specific surface modification for loose sand fixation in oil and gas
wells without affecting porosity and flux. The value-added business approach of EPG; innovation through
incorporating new and customized nano materials in existing products
The market introduction period can be neglected in the most cases, because the customers are
already there!
The marketing effort can be reduced to visiting a few international exhibitions per year.
The market risks can be neglected, because they already have been addressed by the
customers.
However, it is essential to always maintain a distinctive competitive advantage in material surfaced
tailoring with respect to possible competitors. This is all achieved by the vertical interdisciplinarity
technique, and as a final important step in this process, EPG has developed its own special coating
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technology. It is a robot operated, ultra precise, thin-film deposition technique, which delivers a high
precision coating, even on complex parts. For example, for a 3 μm thick film, the precision is about
+ 0.2 μm.
Some Examples of Commercial Products
Flexible Nano Glass Coatings on metal surfaces for pressing irons and electric devices
A simple example of a high-tech, glasslike and abrasion-resistant coating on stainless steel metal
surfaces is the commercial nanotechnology developed by EPG a couple of years ago. A methyl group
containing a sodium silicate system was developed by using SiO2 nanoparticles as fillers through a sol-
gel technology. This system allows spraying films up to 12 μm in thickness in a one-step process.
After curing at 600C, the remaining thickness is about 5 to 6 μm, a result which is quite unusual
compared to conventional SiO2 sol-gel coating, which achieves only about 1 μm in one step. The
unique feature of this relatively thick coating is the fact that it can be 3-dimensionally deformed by
mechanically processing. This technology is used for mounting coated iron plates on the heating system
of pressing irons. EPG is now producing several hundred thousand parts per year. Turnover and EBIT
per-unit are a factor of 200 higher compared with sales of the basic material alone! Another example of
stainless steel finishes are the fingerprint and scratch-resistant coatings on electric switching devices and
outlets. EPG is producing over half a million parts per year!
Interference Pigmented Coatings on High Performance Cookware
Decoration of high-performance cookware having a sandwich structure (steel/aluminium/steel) and being
suitable for induction heating cannot be coated by conventional enamels due to their temperature
sensitivity: over 500C, the sandwich structure gets delaminated, and over 600C the melting point of
aluminium is approached. This leads to a real lack of decoration possibilities. EPG was able to develop a
nano glass matrix with interference pigments as fillers de-riving their colours from layered platelets coated
with interference oxides (e.g. SiO2, TiO2, Fe2O3). These pigments are available in many colours, and,
due to their oxidic nature, are very resistance to heat; EPG managed, after an appropriate surface
treatment and grinding process, to disperse them homogeneously in the nano glass liquid matrix and to
process them using a robot spray technology to coat the cookware. The systems are FDA approved and
were introduced to the market at the beginning of this year.
Automotive Tailpipes from Polished Stainless Steel
Chrome plated tailpipes loose their shiny surface quickly through heat, and salt in wintertime. For this
reason, a three-micrometer thick invisible coating has been developed, protecting the polished stainless
steel surface reliably against tarnishing by heat and corrosion by salt. The product has been developed
for Porsche cars and introduced into the market only recently. EPG had to develop a highly sophisticated
programme for the robot spray coating, because these tailpipes consist of two tubes lying very closely
together.
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Conclusion
The three above examples demonstrate how nano-based material technologies can be applied to bring
science-based developments to the market place. In order to receive sufficient revenue from a
nanomaterial, it is essential that a value added step is incorporated. In this case, the value added step is
the production of coated parts by a highly sophisticated technology leading to glasslike coatings that
could not be produced otherwise - the so called low-tech by high-tech strategy. This means that nano
materials are applied to the surfaces of already existing products. This leads to the fast market
penetration, with low market risk and requiring a very limited marketing effort. The overall risk of this,
compared with the high-tech by high-tech approach (a good product, but customers have to be looked
for and markets have to be opened) are very low. The disadvantages are a heavy investment in the
production line, and the need to build up high-level engineering capacities.