Nano-Proprietary, Inc.today
announced that upon successful conclusion of its initial research
project with a leading industrial chemical products company in Japan,
its subsidiary, Applied Nanotech, Inc., has entered into an extension
of its research and development partnership agreement to develop
technical inks. Technical inks are inks that can be deposited using
additive processes such as printing, in particular inkjet and screen
printing. The target markets for technical inks are printed circuit
boards, flexible electronics, photovoltaics, displays, communications
instrumentation, and RFIDs.
The purpose of the partnership is to strategize and identify
specific applications, and then develop technical inks to address each
unique situation. The main area of research for the partnership has
involved conductive inks using functionalized nanoparticles that will
be manufactured and commercialized by the chemical company.
The extended project, located at ANI's facilities in Austin,
Texas, will start October 1, 2007. ANI is providing a team of
researchers, laboratory space, equipment and the necessary
installations. During the next twelve months, ANI will receive a
minimum of $625,000 in funding. Under this agreement, ANI's partner has
the option of licensing the intellectual property developed under the
R&D partnership.
"As a result of the first year research agreement, we
identified specific metallic conductive inks to be utilized by the
rapidly developing printed electronics industry," said Dr. Zvi Yaniv,
President and CEO of ANI. "In the second year, we will improve the
stability of our metallic inks and fine-tune alternative processing
methods such as inkjet and laser deposition."
"I am very pleased with the progress that we have made to date
on this project and this continuation is just one more example of our
growing strength in the field of applied nanotechnology," said Tom
Bijou, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Nano-Proprietary, Inc.