“Ireland is one of the rising stars in the (nanotech) sector”.
- Scottish Business and Financial News – Business A.M.

Enterprise Ireland, an agency of the Irish government, supports the early stage development of new businesses, particularly in high tech sectors such as nanotechnology, photonics and biotechnology. The support is critical for academics who wish to spin out technologies from laboratories but lack expertise in business areas. Enterprise Ireland can provide funding, but equally important can provide advice and contacts to the venture capital community through their Irish based staff or their network of overseas offices. In addition, Enterprise Ireland provides grant supports to third level institutions to undertake basic research and applied, or near market research independently or in partnership with an established business.

Ireland has an active nanotechnology sector, according to Dr. Robert Flood, Senior Development Advisor at Enterprise Ireland. Dr. Flood said that the government has funnelled money into basic research through Science Foundation Ireland. The two main themes, he said, are information and communications technologies and biotechnology. He believes that nanotechnology is well suited to Ireland's research infrastructure. “It's an enabling technology that will actually straddle practically every single technological area," he said. "An application developed in a chemistry lab can equally find its way into a computer or into a novel drug delivery system.”

Several multinational companies with an Irish base are progressing in nanotechnology research and development. These include:
IBM
Intel
Hewlett-Packard

Two nanotech companies have successfully spun-out of Irish Universities, NTera from University College Dublin and Allegro Technologies from Trinity College Dublin.

There are also several companies looking at the implementation of commercially available nanomaterials in existing processes, their objective is to develop added value products with improved performance at lower cost.

NTera Ltd.
Allegro-Technologies Ltd.
Elan Corp
Littelfuse Ireland Ltd.

NTera Ltd.
NTera was founded in 1997 as a University College Dublin campus company to develop and commercialise products using nanomaterials. Originally called Nanomat, NTera was founded by Donald Fitzmaurice who is the Professor of Nanochemistry at UCD. Since 1997, NTera has raised $7m from Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, Evolution Capital and private investors.

The Company has developed a strong intellectual property position in the area of nanostructured films and key technologies currently under development include:
- NanoChromics- a paper quality display technology for the ICT sector
- Xoliox - a high power battery technology

NTera was recently named in the second annual 'Tornado Insider 100' list as one of Europe's top emerging private tech companies.

Tew Engineering, one of the UK's leading manufacturers of electronic transport signage, has teamed up with Dublin based nanotechnology group NTera, to produce the world's first paper-quality railway information display, that can be read in direst sunlight. The unit combines NTera's cutting edge NanoChromic paper-quality technology, applied in the form of display panels with Tew's expertise in customer information signage electronics and systems.

NTera has entered into an agreement with Densitron Technologies Ltd to promote its NanoChromics paper-quality display technology based on nanostructured film. The displays have high-quality colour and very fast switching speeds. Densitron will manufacture the units for applications such as signboards, advertising billboards, supermarket shelf displays, e-books and medical testing. The technology may also have application in the smart card sector.

An agreement with German-based Merck KGaA will cover the development, production and marketing of nanomaterials used to manufacture "paper-quality" displays based on NTera's proprietary NanoChromics technology.

NTera and Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. have filed a joint patent and have agreed to continue working together to further develop nanosize lithium titanate spinel materials for use in rechargeable lithium ion batteries. Applications include batteries for portable products such as laptop computers, cell phones, forklifts, wheelchairs and cordless power tools. The lithium ion batteries will offer repeat charge and discharge rates far in excess of anything currently available. For more information please see www.ntera.com

Allegro Technologies Ltd
Allegro is a nanotechnology company that was founded in 2000 as a result of applied research in Trinity's physics department under the direction of Professor Igor Schvets. The founders transferred their nanotechnology expertise into the development of intellectual property surrounding the precise manipulation of minute liquid volumes. Allegro's proprietary liquid handling technology tools enable the miniaturisation of biomolecular and bioanalytical science in applications such as drug discovery, proteomics, genomics and diagnostics. Allegro's technologies enable customers to use significantly smaller sample volumes of biological liquids. This allows higher throughput, leading to faster and cheaper diagnostics and reduced development time of therapeutic drug treatments.

The promoters are Dr Jurgen Osing, Professor Igor Shvets, and Sergei Makarov who are physicists, and Professor Dermot Kelleher who is professor of clinical medicine at TCD. Mr Paid Mc Menamin is the Chairman of Allegro.

In 2001 the company signed its first commercial agreement with Gilson Inc., a leading global supplier of liquid handling systems for multiple applications in the Life Sciences sector. In early 2002 Allegro raised €1.6 million venture capital funding to expand its R & D and operational capabilities.

In April 2002 the company relocated to a custom designed facility as a result of this expansion and currently employs 12 people.

In 2002 Allegro launched prototypes of its first products in May at MipTec in Basel, Switzerland. Currently, the company is finalising its commercial development schedule and expects to commercially launch spot-on™ based products in 2003.

For more information please see www.allegro-technologies.com

Elan Corporation
Modified-oral release drug delivery expertise has formed the cornerstone of Elan Drug Delivery for over 30 years. Fourteen products developed using the oral modified-release technologies of Elan have been marketed worldwide. The Biotechnology Research centre of Elan Drug Delivery at Trinity College Dublin is working towards the development of new technologies to meet currently unmet drug delivery needs.

Typical drug delivery problems include poor solubility, low bioavailability, poor targeted delivery and low oral absorption of macromolecules. Elan offers a range of technologies to address these problem including their proprietary NanoCrystal® Technology.

NanoCrystal® particles are small particles of drug substance, typically less than 1000 nanometres (nm) in diameter, which are produced by milling the drug substance using a proprietary milling technique. The NanoCrystal® particles of the drug are stabilized against agglomeration by surface adsorption of selected GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) stabilizers. The end result is a suspension of the drug substance that behaves like a solution—a NanoCrystal® colloidal dispersion, which can be processed into dosage forms for all routes of administration. For more information please see http://www.elan.com/DrugDelivery/Technologies/dissolution.asp

Littelfuse Ireland Ltd.
Located in Dundalk, Co. Louth, Littelfuse Ireland Ltd. is a world leader in the design, research and development and production of Transient Suppression Devices. The company, which was a pioneer in the Irish electronics industry in the mid 60's, is now a subsidiary of the Littelfuse Corporation of Chicago, Illinois - In the last fiscal year the Corporation had sales of $380 million. Currently Littelfuse Ireland employs 250 full time employees with an annual turn over of $40 million. Metal Oxide Varistors were first introduced to the plant in the 70's. By the mid 80's production of silicon products had stopped and the business focused exclusively on Zinc Oxide Varistors where market demand was rapidly growing. Littelfuse Ireland was the first semiconductor company in Ireland to achieve the prestigious ISO9001 award.

Littelfuse utilises a very sophisticated range of test characterisation and analytical equipment at their Dundalk plant. Given today's highly competitive environment the drive in new design and developments is to work closely with customers at the initial design stages. Littelfuse application of concurrent teams to bring product to market, known as (ACT PTM), ensures that new products are developed to meet customer requirements, for manufacture and brought to market faster than the competition. In response to a growing Transient Voltage Surge Suppressor (TVSS) market, Littelfuse has developed the new third generation MOV with enhanced capabilities and peak current stability. Currently a range of these new parts, which are superior to anything offered by competitors, have been released for European and US AC power mains applications. Littelfuse are focusing future research and development on optimising ceramic formulations, developing next generation processes, increasing the voltage range and suppression capability of their surface mount offerings.

Littelfuse Ireland's interest in nano-powders stem from the increased sinter activity of higher specific surface area powders. This can potentially reduce the processing temperatures of varistors leading (i) to the use of cheaper electrode materials and (ii) higher voltage devices arising from reduced grain sizes.