Round-up of the latest investments, deals and funding initiatives in nanotech. February-March 2018.
Boron nitride nanotubes producer BNNano Inc., has recently raised more than $240,000 in a private equity offering, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is based in Cary, USA with a manufacturing facility in Burlington.
Quantum Dots company UbiQD, Inc., has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant will provide $750,000 in funding over two years for UbiQD’s continued research and development of quantum dot-tinted glass luminescent solar concentrator technology for electricity-generating windows. The company was previously awarded a $225,000 Phase I SBIR grant in July 2016, the results of which were published in ACS Energy Letters in January 2018. The publication highlights UbiQD’s novel quantum dot laminated glass concept and the first-ever third-party certified solar window efficiency.
“With NSF’s support we demonstrated a novel, high-performance sunlight-harvesting window concept in Phase I,” said Dr. Hunter McDaniel, Founder and CEO of UbiQD. “Now with continued funding in Phase II, we plan to optimize for a higher performance-to-cost ratio, scale-up product prototypes, and deploy our windows in pilot installations.”
Strategic Elements Ltd. has received Federal Government financial support for its joint CSIRO and Nanocube Memory Ink Project. Grant funding has been awarded to trial methods of optimising the levels of organic material within a Memory Ink for industrial-scale processes. Minimising the carbon content within a Memory Ink potentially enhances larger-scale manufacturing capability by reducing the number of steps in the fabrication process.
First Graphene has announced the completion of a strategic capital raising. The Company raised AUD3.2 million in a placement undertaken following an approach to FGR from a European-based industrialist wanting to introduce graphene to its products.
SaltX Technology, a Swedish energy storage company that develops and sells a technology with which energy can be stored in salt and recovered in the form of heat or cold, has entered a strategic collaboration with specialty paper producer Ahlstrom-Munksjö to develop a large-scale manufacturing method where paper is coated with graphene. The graphene-coated paper will act as carrier of SaltX patented Nano Coated Salt, increasing the heat conductivity of the SaltX material by up to five times.
UK graphene producers Haydale has announced its financial interim results for the first half of FY2018 (ended on December 31st). Haydale reports revenues of £2.49 million, up 67% from the first half of FY2017. The group’s loss from operations was £2.2 million (down from £2.4 million a year ago). At the end of December 2017 the company had £8.0 million in cache and equivalents.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) is providing funding of $17.3 million for a series of projects to develop carbon capture technology for coal-fired plants. The Institute of Gas and Technology has been awarded $2.9 million to develop a transformational graphene oxide-based membrane process for post-combustion carbon capture. The project has also secured $750,052 in non-federal funding.
