Shrink Nanotechnologies, Inc. ("Shrink"), an innovative nanotechnology company developing products and licensing opportunities in the solar energy production, medical diagnostics and sensors and biotechnology research and development tools businesses, today announced a strategic alliance with Inabata America Corporation to market and sell the Company`s OptiSol Solar Concentrator technologies and ShrinkChip Rapid Prototyping Solution (RPS).
Inabata America Corporation is a subsidiary of Japan-based Inabata & Co., which in 2008 had $5 billion in sales. Through its global network of 2300 employees in 72 facilities covering 17 countries, Inabata provides solutions and services, including outsourced business development, marketing and a sales network that focuses on niche industries including the solar sector.
"With an innovative approach to selling, our strategic alliance with Inabata is an ideal relationship which focuses on first gaining acceptance with the R&D departments of market-leading corporations and bringing our products to market faster by bypassing the business development stage," said Mark L. Baum, CEO of Shrink Nanotechnologies. "Inabata is a leader in the solar sector with a keen focus on plastics, which in 2008 represented approximately 38 percent of their business. We look forward to a long-term and prosperous relationship with Inabata."
As more and more people search for cleaner technologies to meet the world`s energy and power demands, the urgency for solar technology developers to meet these needs has become imperative. In fact, the global solar photovoltaic market surged to an estimated $37 billion for 2008, with an estimated 51 percent compound annual growth rate through 2011, according to SET Energy. Shrink has developed a new generation of disruptive plastic-based solar products using our unique nanostructures and patent-pending photovoltaic quantum dot integration designs which allow for lower cost, higher efficiency solar products that absorb more of the solar rainbow.
The OptiSol SolarConcentrator is a nanotechnology-based plastic solar concentrator and solar film that is a first-of-its-kind in the solar photovoltaic industry. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only a small fraction of the total incident solar radiation potential, with a majority of the light either reflected or converted to thermal energy. Based on electromagnetic non-optical principles and using PolyShrink technology, the OptiSol enhances the capabilities and efficiency of existing solar cell designs by focusing and tuning the incident solar radiation from the sun for optimal silicon absorption, with less of the total spectrum lost as heat or reflection. OptiSol can be made from biodegradable corn-based plastics, thereby offering the first "renewable" renewable energy source.
ShrinkChip RPS is designed to be a low cost biochip prototyping station with an accompanying software suite which provides for the rapid design, fabrication and manufacture of customizable biological research chips, including more complicated microfluidic assays such as integrated lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices. It allows researchers to develop customized biochip designs in hours as opposed to weeks and at a fraction of the cost.