Relevance of Nanomaterials & Nanotechnology to Chemicals & Polymers
Nanoscale materials are at least a 100-year-old industry. Materials as mundane as the fillers in automotive tires are 10- to 500-nm particles of carbon black, graded by size and selling for less than 40 cents per lb. Venerable chemical companies such as Cabot and Degussa-Huls are the leading producers in the mature 6 million-ton-per-year global carbon black markets for tires .
But small companies, predicated on scientific developments in the past decade and spurred on by the U.S. government's nanotechnolgy initiative have been coming out of the woodwork. Venture capitalists' interest is being piqued by the buzz about nanotechnology. The prefix "nano" is almost as ubiquitous as the ". Com" suffix. And it's difficult to separate the reality from the hype because many are privately held firms, with university origins, about which few specifics are available.
Plans for commercializing nanotechnology range from the development of nanoscale electronics and computing applications to the creation of molecular machines and manufacturing capabilities at the nanometer level. But most companies fall in the materials area, producing organic, inorganic, and metal nanomaterials. Many have limited production capabilities for research-scale or maybe development-scale quantities.
However, they are working with partners or alone to develop new applications for nanomaterials. These applications vary from use in polymers, batteries, electronics, cosmetics, sensors, fuel cells, and catalysis to coatings on metals and computer screens and other displays. Other companies are making nanoparticles for biological applications such as drug delivery, discovery, screening, and diagnostics.
Polymers with nanosized reinforcing particles are poised for commercialization, according to a study by market research firm Bin & Associates, Sheboygan, Wis. Automotive and packaging applications will be the first to benefit, predicts company President Peter Bins.
ompared with traditional fillers, nanocomposites may offer enhanced physical features--such as increased stiffness, strength, barrier properties, and heat resistance, without loss of impact strength and with improved aesthetics--in a very broad range of common thermoplastics and thermosets. And because particle sizes are on the order of the wavelengths of visible light, they do not change optical properties such as transparency.
"Most applications are developmental, and the current market is very small, confined primarily to a few nylon-based nanocomposites," Bins explains. "But the future potential is tremendous, on the order of millions of tons by 2010." Nanosized reinforcements will account for only 3 to 5% of this total, or tens of thousands of tons, since optimum benefits are achieved at this low level of incorporation.
The most cost-effective nanomaterials available are layered, often chemically modified, clays consisting of nanometer-thick platelets of up to 1,000 nm in diameter. "Current global demand for nanoclay reinforcements may be only a few thousand tons, a small fraction of the supply capacity already in place," Bins says. "Because of this, current prices are rather high, probably in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 per ton, but future prices should be well below this level as demand increases." By 2010, he estimates that global markets for nanoclays will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with nanocomposite markets valued 15 to 30 times higher.
Two companies active in nanoclay development and commercialization are Nanocor, an Arlington Heights, Ill.-based subsidiary of Amcol International and Southern Clay Products, a Gonzales, Texas-based subsidiary of the U.K.'s Laporte. Despite the positive market outlook for nanoclays, Nanocor is up for sale as Amcol seeks "strategic alternatives" for its businesses, and Southern Clay is among operations being sold by Laporte as it focuses on specialty organics.
Nanocor has patented technology and has said it's gearing up to produce as much as 20,000 tons per year. The company has development agreements with Bayer, for nylon nanocomposites and Eastman for polyethylene terephthalate packaging applications. It also has a license from Toyota, which developed products in the late 1980s, for producing nylon nanocomposites. Likewise, Southern Clay has provided nanoclays to a joint development project with General Motors and Montell to produce thermoplastic nanocomposites for use in auto parts.
Most major polymer companies are exploring nanocomposite technologies. Plastics compounder RTP, Winona, Minn., has commercialized nylon nanocomposites for film and sheet applications, and Triton Systems, Chelmsford, Mass., works in packaging. Dow Chemicals and Magna International are developing production technology for automotive applications under the government's Advanced Technology Program. In Japan, Ube Industries and Unitika are commercial producers of nylon nanocomposites.
Hybrid Plastics, Fountain Valley, Calif., has a technology for producing polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes--essentially chemically modified nanoscale particles of silica--that can be incorporated into plastics. The company says it can manufacture bulk amounts and is collaborating with plastics producers and users, including the Air Force. "The first 10 years of nanocomposite development were filled with frustrations: the demonstration of fantastic performance characteristics and yet inconsistent performance replication, intractable technical barriers, and high costs to achieve good exfoliation [delamination and dispersion] of the nanosized reinforcements," Bins explains. There are now "few further technical barriers to rapid commercialization," with reports that "nanocomposite trials by technology leaders have met full performance expectations," he continues. "Several large applications are close to commercialization, meaning they will hit the market within the next few months." |