Company looks at production methods for nanoparticles

With the help of a raft of new funding, Promethean Particles will also investigate how to produce exotic particles that have so far proved too costly to make commercially.

The company is the lead partner in the €9.7m (£7.8m) EU SHYMAN project (Sustainable Hydrothermal Manufacturing of Nanomaterials) and has also recently attracted £500,000 in private investment.

‘Nano has not made as big an impact as it should have done,’ said Prof Ed Lester, technical director at Promethean. ‘But the reasons for this are that the production methods are still developing and people are trying to use not-so-good particles in the final product and they just aren’t performing, and that’s why we’re not seeing the quantum leap people predicted.’

The company’s reactor technology uses a process known as continuous hydrothermal synthesis to produce inorganic nanoparticles suspended in water as an aqueous dispersion. As the particles flow out of the reactor they are in dispersion and are never handled as dry powders, thus avoiding agglomeration.