Academic tie-ups help UK companies to nano awards

The importance of academia to the United Kingdom’s nascent nanotech-based companies was shown this week with the announcement of the first Business Innovation Awards for nanotech at the UK NanoForum on 28 October, organised by UK Trade and Investment.

All the winners have close relationships with academia. The winner of the Clean Technologies category, Nanoco Technologies of Manchester, for example, was itself spun out of the University of Manchester.

“We have a strong relationship with the university,” said CEO Michael Edelman. “Whenever there is a skill or resource that we don’t have, we have it in the university.”

Nanoco, said Edelman, has resolved the problem of how to mass-produce quantum dots – which can convert light to energy and vice versa. Nanoco’s semiconductor nanocrystals glow in different colours when illuminated by ultraviolet light. “Our customers are Fortune 1000 technology companies across the world,” said Edelman. He explained that previously quantum dots had been cadmium-based and produced in quantities of milligrams. “Now they are made in batches of kilograms, and heavy-metal free,” he said.

The two other winners are both health-based. Applied Nanodetectors of Enfield, Middlesex, has developed a device that can instantaneously detect asthma. “Patients breathe onto a nanochip detector and get a green or a red light in seconds to determine if they are suffering from this condition,” said CEO Victor Higgs.

For Higgs, the relationship with the UK’s National Physical Laboratory is crucial. They have the ability to monitor at the atomic level, he said. Importantly, they give open access to equipment, and IP issues and conflicts of interest are avoided since, he said, “We’re focused on the device and they’re focused on the measurement of the device.”

Higgs added: “They always seem to have somebody there that knows [how to help us]. They know how to work with companies.”

The third winner was Intrinsiq Materials, based in Hampshire. The company develops novel nanomaterials that will, it says, lead to a wide range of enhanced products for the health and wellness sectors. “This includes coatings and devices that can attack virus, bacteria and fungi, and have already demonstrated effect against bird flu [H5N1], norovirus and MRSA,” said Paul Reip, Director, Government and Strategic Programmes.

Intrinsiq Materials was created out of Qinetiq (formerly the major part of the UK’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) in 2002. Accepting the award, Reip paid tribute to the “support of our team, our academic partners and our colleagues at Cody Gate Ventures”. Intrinsiq Materials, said Reip, has close links with Queen Mary (University of London), the University of Hertfordshire, Brunel University and Loughborough University.