THE claim by American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson that, `If you build a
better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door鈥� was always pretty
dubious. But for an Australian company which used the Internet to publicise its
wares, it has turned out to be accurate.
Eighteen months ago Advanced Powder Technology (APT), a University of Western
Australia spinoff company, established a website to showcase its products. Last
month, APT signed a multimillion dollar agreement with South Korean interests
establishing a joint venture.
It all began when DongJoo Rhee, an R&D planner for the electronic
materials maker Samsung Corning in Seoul, was searching the Web for promising
new technologies. He came across some micrographs posted by the Australian
company. Emails were exchanged. Visits followed. And the deal to set up Advanced
Nano Technologies (ANT) was closed.
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It鈥檚 not a bad acronym, given that ANT will be producing nanopowders, used
for a range of applications including polishing computer chips and forming tiny
capacitors. Nanopowders are composed of ultrafine particles less than one ten
thousandth of a millimetre in diameter. To put these minuscule dimensions into
perspective, if the granules in nanopowders were the size of pebbles, then dust
particles would be mountains.
Samsung Corning is interested in using the powders in slurry form for
polishing silicon chips. Today鈥檚 complex chips consist of alternate layers of
metallic conductors and organic insulators. Each layer must be
polished鈥攁nd the thinner the layer, the finer the polishing medium must
be. Polishing is one of the fastest growing segments of the semiconductor
market, and is already worth over US$1 billion a year.
The Koreans are providing half of ANT鈥檚 initial capital of A$12
million. The money will pay for a pilot plant in Western Australia where APT鈥檚
technology will be scaled up from its current, lab bench level. In addition,
Samsung Corning is to pump a further A$1.5 m into APT, to fund research
into new applications. As a result, a significant portion of nanopowder
technology looks set to stay in Australia.
Nanopowders are the first area of nanotechnology to be commercialised.
Samsung Corning forecasts that, by 2010, the world market for the tiny particles
will be worth around US$2 billion. ANT aims to capture at least 15 per
cent of that market.
Nanopowders can also be used to help miniaturise electronic devices such as
multilayer capacitors. In addition to higher performance, these smaller devices
require less material, hence are cheaper to make. According to Rhee, other
emerging markets for nanopowders include protective coatings and pigments.
The conventional way to make nanopowders is via vaporisation. But the powders
produced using this method are less than optimum. It鈥檚 difficult to control the
size of the particles, and they have an annoying tendency to stick together. In
addition, vaporisation is a costly, energy-intensive process which relies on
highly refined starting materials.
APT鈥檚 technology is much simpler. It is based on the humble ball mill, a
simple processing machine used to grind conventional powders.
Paul McCormick, a soft spoken professor of metallurgy at the University of
Western Australia, discovered it was possible to produce chemical reactions
inside a ball mill. 鈥淭he balls sort of weld and fracture the particles,鈥� he
explains.
From McCormick鈥檚 discovery a whole new technology, known as mechanochemical
processing, has emerged over the past decade. The process is very versatile, and
applicable to a range of materials. Since the reactions take place at room
temperature, and typically take less than an hour to occur, it is also
relatively inexpensive.