Latest nanotech investments, commercial agreements and rounds of finance. January-March 2020.
Dotz Nano has signed a two-year $166,000 frame purchase order to supply its ValiDotz security markers to a Switzerland-based plastic compounder. Under the deal the compounder will on-sell Dotz’s non-toxic security markers to its customers in the luxury watches, medical equipment, automotive and safety component industries as an anti-counterfeiting measure inserted during the plastic manufacturing process. To secure the agreement, the compounder will pay Dotz a 10% advance payment, with additional instalments to be paid to Dotz with each order with a ratio of 30% on order and 70% on delivery.
Merck Gmbh intends to negotiate a new supply and licencing agreement Nanoco Group PLC and has issued a three month notice of termination of the current licence during renegotiations. The original 2016 licence was renewed automatically every year and included “escalating minimum annual royalties that were payable unless terminated”.
While renegotiation is ongoing, Merck is still placing purchase orders with Nanoco for small-scale research and development services and cadmium-free quantum dots product. The minimum EUR500,000 annual licence fee for the contract year ending June 30 will still be payable.
P2i has signed an agreement with Samsung that will see its Barrier nanocoating technology deployed across several smartphone designs, extending water and liquid protection to the internal components of selected Samsung Galaxy smartphones. P2i’s Barrier will be deployed across other smartphone models in due course. The new agreement builds on an existing relationship between Samsung and P2i, dating back to 2014. P2i’s Barrier is a next-generation waterproofing technology that provides higher levels of liquid protection and enables manufacturers to protect the components, even after water gets into the device.
Advanced materials company Versarien has entered into a £6 million subscription agreement with US-based Lanstead Capital Investors. Versarien will sell 15 million new shares to Lanstead at 40p each, which is approx. 9.75% of Versarien’s existing share capital. This share price is around 54% premium to Versarien’s mid-market price on 20 March 2020.
Cambridge Raman Imaging Limited (CRIL), has been awarded €140,000 (£116,380) in EU funding to accelerate development of its graphene-enabled scanning microscope. CRIL, which was spun out from the University of Cambridge and Italian university Politecnico di Milano in 2018, is developing a microscope which uses graphene to modulate ultra-short pulses of light to diagnose and track cancer tumours.
Verditek, a developer of lightweight solar panels in Italy, recently raised GBP 505,750 before expenses, which it plans to use mainly to fund commercial opportunities announced earlier this year. Some of the proceeds will go towards the joint development program with Paragraf, under which the two are working on a silicon/graphene integrated solar cell.
The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has selected three projects to receive approximately USD$3 million in federal funding. Among these projects is a laboratory-scale coal-derived graphene process – the University of North Dakota will demonstrate a laboratory-scale coal-derived graphene process to produce graphene oxide, reduced graphene oxide, and graphene quantum dots starting from domestic US coal.
