Transforming nano-research into a commercial product or service is a challenge, but strides are being taken, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
HOW DO you give the very small some very large market opportunities? Nanotechnology, an area of research and industry dealing with objects thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, is one of the State’s key focus areas for research funding.
With a growing number of research projects and industry collaborations getting off the ground, nanotechnology proponents say it is critical to help research evolve into commercial applications – the theme of this year’s annual Nanoweek Conference, held this week at Carton House.
For its size, Ireland gives considerable funding to nanotechnology research, with the goal of creating future companies and jobs as well as attracting in international companies and research and development opportunities.
The State currently supplies €374 million in total to the area – with 70 per cent coming from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) – a much higher per capita funding level than the Netherlands at €235 million, Israel at €100 million, or Singapore at €111 million.
By comparison, Germany gives €1.47 billion, and the US €6.74 billion, according to Michael Ryan of SFI.
In 2006, however, despite several years of investment, a report by Intel pinpointed two key problems. “Ireland did not have infrastructure to do RD work and there was little international awareness of what Ireland was doing in nanoscience,” says Diarmuid O’Brien, executive director of Trinity College’s nanotechnology research centre Crann.
As a result and following some benchmarking research, the State has developed that infrastructure at centres like Crann and UCC’s Tyndall Institute. Over time, it has brought in a leading group of nanotechnology researchers from home and abroad.
As a result, O’Brien adds, Ireland was ranked eighth internationally in materials science, a key area of nanotechnology work, by the Times Higher Education Supplement.
Between 2006 and 2008, Irish researchers also produced about 700 nanotechnology-related publications, moving their rating on international publications in the area from 21st in 2002 to sixth in 2008, said Ryan. There is an expectation though that more than publications must emerge from this level of State investment in a cutting-edge area of science and technology.
Taking research and transforming it into a commercial product or service remains challenging. Speakers at the conference suggest the current long development timeline might be shortened if researchers and industrialists worked together and talked more productively.
Oxford professor and nanotechnology entrepreneur Peter Dobson offered an insight into one of the key issues he feels faces young companies in the nanotechnology sector – the continuing gap between science and industry. This can become a real problem for a company when its scientist founders think more in terms of research than of solutions to problems, he says.
Dobson cites the famous 1959 essay by scientist CP Snow, Two Cultures, which described a split between science and literary life.
“In rereading the essay, I realised much is really a criticism of pure scientists and engineers, that they don’t talk to each other,” he says. “I’m hopeful that nanotechnology, where there’s quite a convergence of cultures and ideas, will heal this rift.”
The rift is often represented in the inability of a company to perceive where a market might be.
As he notes from experience with one of his own companies, Oxonica, which creates nano-infused sunscreens for retailers like Boots: “We realised [that] rather than building technologies, we should be providing solutions.”
Delwyn Evans of British-based water and oil repellent coatings company P2i echoes this concern, speaking about the necessity to “define the need”, to have a clear understanding of the problem a company’s nanotechnology discoveries are supposed to solve.
A company also needs a simple demonstration of what the technology does – the concern of its intended market – rather than focusing on the researcher’s infatuation with how it does it.
“It’s easy for scientists to get excited and caught up in the technical detail,” Evans says.
Jonathan Coleman of Trinity’s school of physics and Crann is involved in researching flexible screen technologies in partnership with HP. He notes that scientists have to rethink the way they work when partnering with industry.
“Research in academia that is directed by industry is a bit different and can be hard to get used to, but there are benefits,” he says.
Whereas pure science research might simply be interested in testing various materials and determining their specific qualities, having an industrial partner, he adds, means there is a clear goal, a specific level of industrial performance needed for commercial manufacture.
Coleman describes how early presumptions of which type of nanowires would work best for a flexible screen proved to be wrong. A range of breakthroughs over the course of the group’s research work means a commercial solution is considerably closer than it was at the start.
“But we wouldn’t have got to this stage without contributions from both industry and academia,” he says.
Nanotechnology companies must carefully consider business issues, too.
Trinity College Dublin and Oxford professor John Pethica, founder of Nano Instruments, says the issue of intellectual property is often highlighted for small to medium-sized businesses, yet it is more important as part of the company’s exit strategy – valued when it either goes public or is sold to a larger company.
He says developing IP is very expensive and sometimes best done in partnership with a larger company or research centre.
“What you are actually reliant on is know- how,” Pethica adds, advising companies to remember that most of the initial assets of the company are in the heads of the employees.
A company should also be thinking of an exit strategy at an early phase.
“What’s better: 50 per cent of a €20 million company or 5 per cent of a €200 million company? Actually it is the same amount, but presents a big issue for how you want to structure your company.”
Most SMEs will be bought by a large company and relatively few grow large, he says, so most companies probably want to be considering that 50 per cent.
Companies will also want to consider whether to base themselves in Europe or the United States. In Europe, there’s relatively little direct support for companies, although he cites Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland as exceptions and an environment less tolerant of risk and failure.
Ireland’s low corporate tax rate “is less useful for RD intensive companies because they roll profits back into RD. So if you are RD intensive, 12 per cent corporation tax isn’t very interesting.”
He asks whether smaller countries like Ireland need a different strategy for encouraging nanotechnology RD an company growth.
Dobson advises companies to look for early revenue generation, to keep in mind the needs of customers, to remember that scaling up production to commercial levels is almost always an issue, and to be a solution-provider rather than pushing “hard tech”.
SAUDI FUNDING: CRANN SECURES €1M FOR SOLAR RESEARCH
CRANN, THE nanotechnology research institute, has secured €1 million in funding from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) in Saudi Arabia for a collaboration to develop technology which it is hoped will make large-scale solar energy production possible.
Two senior researchers and three PhD students from Kaust and Trinity College Dublin will work on the project, which will also take advantage of the Sasheen super-computer at the Saudi Arabian university.
The amount of solar energy absorbed by the Earth in a year is double that which will ever be produced by non- renewable sources such as oil, gas and nuclear. The challenge is efficiently harnessing this solar energy.
The project has "huge potential benefits in addressing the challenge facing the world to find renewable and green sources of energy", says Prof John Boland, director of Crann.
The establishment of Kaust, which opened in 2009, and investments in solar research, are key parts of Saudi Arabia's strategy to transition to a post-oil economy.
JOHN COLLINS
