By Allan Maurer
Solar cells are only one product Blue Nano materials improve
CHARLOTTE, NC –Blue Nano does not tell anyone how it makes its high nanotechnology materials that help manufacture durable fuel cells, longer lasting batteries and better solar panels. “No one can match our quality and volume,” explains David Himebaugh, company president. “We can make more material in a month than anyone else can in a year.”
Although it is focused on the energy sector, its nanotech materials have a wide variety of other uses and potential uses in automotive, adhesives, photonics, electronics, health care, and other sectors. Blue Nano’s unique manufacturing process makes its products more cost effective for many uses, Himebaugh says.
Working in the world of the very small—there are 25.4 million nanometers in one inch—requires quite specialized knowledge. Even the physical properties of materials change at that ultra tiny scale. “Inert things become combustible, transparent ones become opaque. The rules are different,” explains Himebaugh.
The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Chang Chen developed the original process while in school at North Carolina State University, but Blue Nano has added many additional scientists and advanced the process considerably since the company was founded in 2007.
“The process is key,” he says. “We’re able to customize lengths and diameters and do it all in very high quality and high volume, so it’s cost effective.”
The company can take any of the natural elements it works with, copper, gold, silver, and so forth and cost-effectively create more surface area on them at the nanoscale. “That’s what we found the key to doing,” Himebaugh says.
A manufacturer using a gram of nanotech silver powder in a product could gain 3,000 times more surface area with a gram of Blue Nano’s silver wires, he says. That allows more efficient chemical reactions and lets the manufacturer use less material.
Blue Nano’s CAT-110 fuel cell catalyst begins with a thin, sponge-like membrane made out of gold. Platinum is then evenly coated across the top of the sponge at a thickness of only one nanometer. “Below that, you’re at the atomic level,” Himebaugh notes.
“Our stuff is good, durable, and less expensive,” he adds. Among other things, it increases fuel cell power density and far exceeds the Department of Energy’s performance standards for 2015. “Fuel cells are going to be powering quite a few things, from laptops to vehicles,” says Himebaugh, “and we can bring that much closer to happening, much quicker than people thought.”
The 15-employee company is self-funded. It sells its materials to original equipment manufacturers. It is one of 60 innovative companies presenting at the upcoming Southeast Venture Conference in Tysons Corner, VA, Feb. 24-25 (see: www.seventure.org).
Online: www.bluenanoinc.com
Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org
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Tags: batteries, Blue Nano, fuel cells, nanotechnology, SEVC, solar cells
