nowEurope

Five Slovak and one Austrian researcher have started their business in the emerging area of nanotechnologies by establishing a company - Danubia NanoTech - in Bratislava. They had a brave vision and experience but what they lacked was money.

A startup headquartered in Bratislava, Danubia NanoTech combines a highly qualified team with wide ranging experience in nanoscale physics, along with close connections to some of the best centers of research and development in Europe, all of it in a low-cost but well endowed environment.

The company focuses its activities on production of carbon nanotubes by arc - discharge and laser ablation methods. As prepared, carbon nanotubes are purified using centrifugation. Final material is characterized by Raman spectroscopy and optical spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity. The pure and well characterized material is mixed with various polymers to obtain composites with high electrical and thermal conductivity and mechanical performance. The company can produce conductive transparent networks of nanotube with great potential applications (sensors, field-effect transistors).

The founders of Danubia NanoTech are physicists with considerable experience in nano-science and nanotechnology. They are co-authors of about 500 publications in the field of Carbon Nanotube research, and two of them share an ownership of five patents. The members of the group have been active at well-established institutions such as the Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research, Stuttgart (Germany), the University of Vienna (Austria), the Wake Forest University (USA), the Weizmann Institute (Israel) and others.

They have been seeking an investor since the company was established in the summer of 2004. Last year they entered into the Technology Incubator of the Slovak University of Technology (see the article at noweurope.com), which helped the company to start a negotiation with the investment fund.

The company was an expert leader in two proposals for the FP6 (area NMP) and asked for a support from the loan schemes. The main obstacle in this scheme was the short history of the company and lack of references.

The company seeks for an investment of 150.000 EUR for building the carbon nanotube laboratory as a prerequisite for the further development of the company. According to the business plan, Danubia NanoTech will focus on two main areas: production of nanotubes for clients from industry or research laboratories and development of new products based on the carbon nanotubes