Russia and Ukraine reveal nanoparticle advances

A DTI Global Watch Mission to Russia and Ukraine aimed to identify nanotechnologies and partnerships to complement and enhance UK activity.

If nanotechnology is to deliver its huge commercial potential, researchers have to discover how to produce and manipulate nanoparticles to industry's requirements.

Aware that Russia and Ukraine have world-class expertise in these areas, a DTI Global Watch Mission aimed to identify technologies and partnerships to complement and enhance UK activity.

Largely as a result of extensive military funding in the past, Russia and Ukraine have outstanding nanoparticle technology capabilities.

Today, with this funding dramatically reduced and progress towards commercialisation curtailed, both countries are keen to capitalise on their capabilities through collaborative research projects and licensing arrangements.

"The quantity and quality of research coming out of these countries is impressive and it is clear that institutes are working on scales greater than our universities", said Dr David Parker, a technology consultant to the mission's coordinating body IMPACT Faraday Partnership and Programme Coordinator for the DTI Link programme ACORN (A Collaboration on Research into Nanoparticles).

Gaining first-hand knowledge of the novel process technologies being developed and how they are being applied were key mission priorities.

But there was one additional and, according to Dr Parker, crucial consideration.

"Researchers from both countries are already collaborating with most of the world's major players including the USA, Germany, Korea, India and China".

"We must increase their exposure in the UK", he said.

As well as increasing awareness among the mission team, representing DTI Global Watch Service, Hosokawa Micron , Ionotec , Johnson Matthey, Procter and Gamble , QinetiQ Nanomaterials and Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare , the mission will also spread the message to a wider audience at the mission seminar to be held in London next February.

"There are some 20 different methods for producing nanoparticle materials and it is said that Russia and Ukraine are using them all", sais Dr Parker.

"They have also got scale-up capability in most of these technologies and can make up to hundreds of kilogrammes per annum, tens of tonnes per annum in some cases".

Dr Parker says every institute visited during the mission was home to leading-edge research, but cites three beacon institutes which are definitely among the best in the world.

Thers are the Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography in Moscow, which is home to high-quality research into crystallographic technologies for the measurement and creation of crystals; the Paton Electric Welding Institute in Kyiv, which is using electron beam techniques to produce protective coatings for aircraft engine turbine blades - already the subject of collaborations with Pratt and Whitney and General Electric in the USA; and the Institute of Structural Macrokinetics in the science city of Chernogolovka, which has developed and is licensing a technology for making refractory powders and shapes for use in water purification filters, cosmetic face powders, abrasion-cutting instruments and specialist coatings for fuel cell electrodes.

The mission team is determined to maintain the momentum created by the mission.

"We now need to notify UK industry of the technologies we were particularly impressed by, and get collaborative activity going", saids Parker.

"The mission report and seminar will show where the opportunities are - it will then be up to individual organisations to investigate them further".

"We saw some very interesting work on the production of new materials for fuel cells and for hydrogen storage", said Juan Matthews, DTI International Technology Promoter.

Researchers are working at scales greater than we are so we should be able to get sufficient quantities for proper evaluation, says Parker.The mission spent two days in Kyiv, Ukraine and three in Moscow.

With superb support from the Moscow Institute of Steels and Alloys and Kyiv's Institute of Problems of Material Science, together with the DTI Closed Nuclear Cities Partnership, two exceptionally well-attended seminars were held, during which the team met representatives from around 60 research institutes.

"This was a very lively mission, whose packed itinerary shows how many different organisations there were to see and how keen they were to talk to us", said DTI Matthews.

There are opportunities for UK organisations: Surface science, colloids and particle production capabilities in these two countries are massive - and potentially available to UK organisations through licensing and contract research (organised via the International Science and Technology Centre in Moscow and the Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine).

Scale-up capability seen during the mission confirms that many organisations in Russia and Ukraine are in a position to supply industrial quantities of nanoparticles, particularly ceramics.

Many interesting new techniques seen during the mission for the manufacture and use of nanoparticles and functional materials could be adopted by UK organisations.

This article has been reprinted from Global Watch, the monthly magazine of the DTI Global Watch Service.

For further information and a link to the latest issue of Global Watch Magazine, please visit the DTI Global Watch website.

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