Five years ago Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of Nano Holdings, had an epiphany after seeing a chunk of Antarctic ice the size of Connecticut disappear into the ocean.
“It was one of those fairly incredible things when you think about what that meant,” said Hall-Tipping “This was something that had been stable for thousands of years.”
The then-venture capital investor, primarily funding technology companies till then, shifted his focus to energy and the science of the very small and opened Nano Holdings in Rowayton. He now has 14 projects scattered throughout the globe that show near-magical promise for the future.
“Think of the world; we and everything you see is made up of atoms,” said Hall-Tipping. “What nanotechnology is is taking those atoms and literally playing around with them like Lego blocks. Things fit together a certain way. For the first time in human history, you actually have the ability to pick up an atom and place them the way you want. There are some very powerful things that happen when you can do that.”
Hall-Tipping said primary to many of the holding company”™s breakthroughs was discovery of carbon nanotubes, molecules that, while very long, remain narrow and strong. They are the linear version of the better-known buckyballs.
Hall-Tipping said the carbon nanotubes are produced by putting graphite into a plasma furnace.
“They are 100 times the strength of steel at a fraction of the weight,” said Hall-Tipping. “What happens is that you can do things with those carbon nanotubes that you couldn”™t do before. For example, you could put that into a material to fortify it. In other forms of carbon nanotubes they can conduct electricity. That”™s where you can make magic happen. It is that magic of changing the properties of something that you couldn”™t do to something you can that enables you to make materials that may change the world; which is why we do it.”
Hall-Tipping said Nano Holdings is focused where nanotechnology and energy meet.
“The United States is the largest energy consumer in the world,” said Hall-Tipping. “We spend about $3 trillion on lighting, heating and cars.”
Hall-Tipping said of that $3 trillion, $1.6 trillion goes to waste.
“In an incandescent light, 90 percent of what”™s going into it will make heat not light, which is of course wasted,” said Hall-Tipping. “A third of everything we make at a power plant is lost from start to finish. How many industries do you know that you have a third percent loss factor.”
According to Hall-Tipping, one of the fourteen Nano Holding projects, each incorporated, is making light without heat.
“The nano tubes are mixed with phosphorous and laid flat on Saran wrap,” said Hall-Tipping. “It is a new form of light. It”™s literally sprayed on, completely flexible and cold to the touch; there”™s no heat.”
Hall-Tipping said the new light form is “13 times more efficient than an incandescent light bulb, four times more efficient than a fluorescent tube. In the world of global warming, why build four more coal plants; why not just use the existing coal plant you”™ve got four times more efficiently? That”™s what we do; we go around the world hunting for the scientists in the universities that are working on stuff like that. In a couple cases we”™ve gone in a relatively short period of time from going to some innovative idea a scientist had to some very real results with some fairly rudimentary prototypes. Over the next years, we”™ll have figured how you make it, what the energy efficiency is going to be, and then you can start applying it. Then it becomes the natural acquisition of a large company. That”™s our business model.”
Nano Holdings has projects at numerous schools, including: Wake Forest University, Yale, Cambridge University (in England) and University of Florida.
Of the 14 projects, there are currently five listed with company names and objectives on the company Web site, including FiberCell, PureLux, Solgel, nRadiance and NirVision.
“They”™re all working on very different ideas,” said Hall-Tipping. “These are people who win Nobel Prizes down the road and we get the privilege of working with them.”
Nano Holdings gives scientists with ideas in the nano field limited sums of money, usually a few hundred thousand dollars, to test ideas.
“They don”™t have many places to go to find people who will put up money,” said Hall-Tipping. “We say any idea is worthwhile until you prove that not to be the case, particularly if you”™re working on energy. You”™re not going to find lightning in a bottle.”
