11.8.22-Tokyo-Showcase-Nano-C

KERIN PEREZ HARWOOD: Hello, I'm Kerin Perez, Director of Business Development at Nano-C. We are a materials company. A world leader in advanced carbon materials, including fullerenes, and single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Our company was founded by Dr. Jack Howard, who was an MIT professor emeritus, and world leader in nanostructured carbon materials. We also have a number of people on our team in operations and research who also attended MIT.

So global challenges require advanced material solutions, but the problem is that the solutions that are out there, are just not cutting it in terms of performance. Nano-C's advanced materials platform uses nanocarbons to drive levels of performance and enable new functionality. Our focus is on global challenges, such as clean energy solutions, extending Moore's Law, and reducing the energy demand of electronic devices.

Everything really starts with manufacturing for us. So our combustion-based manufacturing process allows us to produce nanocarbon materials at commercial scale, including fullerenes and single-walled carbon nanotubes, which we call our base materials. This process was developed out of MIT, and you can use biofuel for this process as well.

Once we have our materials, our base materials, we do what we call functionalization, or modifying the materials for specific applications. We have over 250 patents around modifying materials including purification, functionalization, and separation.

Once we do this, we are able to apply our materials at the device level, through our customers. So through electronic applications like semiconductor lithography or solar cells, our customers apply our materials at the device level where the benefits of those materials are realized.

So we can apply our materials to a variety of different applications, but the ones that I will be going over today are focused on fullerene materials for thin film electronic applications.

So the first example is an organic photovoltaic thin film device. We are working with our customer who is using standard p/n type materials, which include a fullerene acceptor called C60-PCBM They needed a more advanced material solution to enable their lamination step, which was at 120 degrees C.

So what we did was we developed and provided a new material to them called FD23. What it did was, it improved the morphology of the active layer where the fullerene sits in the device, and enabled an increase in thermal stability, which is what the customer was looking for. As well as an increase in lifetime of the device. It also increased the power conversion efficiency of the device as well.

Here's the data that shows the comparison between FD23, the advanced fullerene derivative, and C60-PCBM. And you can see here that our material performed much better in our customer's device. And I'm happy to say that this material is actually designed into our customer's product now, and is being sold commercially.

So stability of a device is not our customer's only concern. So as I mentioned, we are able to manufacture fullerenes at a large scale, but also at a stable price and a stable quality.

So in this example, Nano-C provides a standard fullerene material to a large Japanese chemical company, who turns that material into a novel OPD formulation. So the benefits that we provide here, for this fingerprint sensor application, which is actually a thin film sensor that has the fullerene inside of it, and it enables a full screen fingerprint application. So you can basically open your screen at any place on the device with this technology.

So we were able to provide the material at a better performance versus our competitors. A better quality and our customer, the Japanese chemical company, was also very pleased with our IP portfolio and our ability to innovate.

So in Japan, as I mentioned, we do have customers here in the country. We have a local representative that helps us with business development activities, and just assisting the customer locally. We also have local distributors who enable us to import our materials into Japan.

We are fully trade compliant with regulatory safety and other requirements as our materials are qualified here. What we're really looking for in Japan is strengthening our business relationships, and finding more strategic partners who are interested in applying nanocarbon materials.

So finally, as I mentioned, we are looking for strategic partnerships, but specifically with device OEMS, application development partners, and electronic material suppliers. In the energy space, we're really focusing on high-efficiency solar, advanced solar applications, and in that area we're looking for partners who are interested in next generation electron transport layer materials.

We're also looking to partner with companies who require battery additives. So single-walled carbon nanotube based battery additives for batteries and supercaps. In terms of our application development needs, we're looking to work directly with companies who would like to develop, who are looking at more flexible transparent conducting electrode type applications, to get those commercialized in devices as well.

And then finally, we work with a company called Irresistible Materials to develop advanced EUV semiconductor lithography resists. And we're currently looking for a high-volume manufacturer to help us formulate and scale up those materials for distribution into the industry.

Thank you for your time. My name is Kerin Perez Harwood, Director of Business Development. Looking forward to speaking with you at the break.