Specialties in Brief

08 December 2003 00:00  [Source: ICB Americas]

Nano-C Inc., based in Westwood, Mass., says that it has developed a new combustion method to produce fullerenes that, according to a company representative, will reduce production costs "by a factor of 10." Additionally, the company's patented process incorporates features critical for scaling-up to the large production rates necessary for commercialization. This process is currently operating at semi-pilot scale at the company's facility in Westwood. Nano-C says it is speeding the adoption of fullerene applications and extending them to bulk applications such as commodity polymers and materials. "Our efficient combustion process enables the manufacturing of commercial grades of fullerenes covering a wide range of purities and compositions that can be tailored to customer applications for the best cost and performance," says Jack B. Howard, Nano-C's founder. "Nano-C's scalable, low-cost method of producing pure fullerenes with no solvent-based post-processing has finally become a reality." Other applications for mass-produced fullerenes include applications for pharmaceuticals, personal care and electrical conducting. Discovered in 1985, fullerenes are ball-shaped molecules of carbon that structurally resemble the geodesic dome invented by architect Buckminster Fuller.

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