CRANN Success at TCD Innovation Showcase

CRANN researchers reported hoarse voices last week as the curtains dropped on the Innovation and Technologies Showcase on the evening of October 14th in the O’Reilly Hall. The showcase, organised by TCD’s Research & Innovation team, provided companies with the opportunity to review novel projects and consider whether they would want to invest in the technologies, licence them into their company, or form their own campus company.

Trinity Research & Innovation’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO) is the first point of contact for companies seeking to find opportunities to collaborate with leading research groups. The TTO promotes and manages the interaction between TCD researchers, funding agencies and industry. It is also responsible for managing TCD’s Intellectual Property, Technology Transfer and Commercialisation.

CRANN had representation at 10 stands at the event and generated much interest. For more information on any of the projects below, contact Brendan Ring, CRANN Commercialisaton Manager at 01-8963088, email brendan.ring@tcd.ie

Diamond Patterning (http://adamainnovations.com/)
Researcher: Dr Graham Cross
Development Stage: Ready for Commercialisation
Diamond is the hardest known material. It is compatible with biology, is chemically inert, and is an intrinsic wide bandgap semiconductor. These properties make diamond an ideal material for a wide range of nano and microscale applications in industries including MEMS, semiconductors, hard-disk manufacturing, LED/photonics, clean-energy technologies and medical applications. Our diamond patterning technology enables high resolution nano-scale engraving on to the surface of diamond. This facilitates a wide range of applications specific to diamond in a simple cost-efficient method for the first time.

Porous Polymers
Researchers: John Boland, Ronan Daly
Development Stage: Product Development
Polymer films with ordered arrays of micro or nanoscale pores can be formed using an inexpensive self-organisation method. Understanding the mechanism has uncovered a remarkably flexible system that allows a broad range of pore morphologies to be formed. This platform technology has many potential applications, some of which are in the fields of cell culturing, photonic materials and micro-reaction vessels. Drug delivery is an area of keen interest and is currently under investigation.

Nano-composite Polymers
Researcher: Yurii Gounko
Development Stage: Product Development
Treating polymeric fibres, fabrics and films with nanomaterials can be a cost effective means of improving their tensile strength and conductivity. For example Kevlar fibres treated with this TCD technique have shown almost twofold increase in strength, conductivity of polyethylene composites increased by 7 orders of magnitude. This invention has the potential to provide a distinct  ompetitive edge over existing polymer composite technologies and has potential for many industrial  applications including flexible transparent electrodes in displays, solar cells gas barrier layers and other devices.

BioFunctional Graphene Sensors
Researchers: Georg Duesberg, Martin Hegner
Development Stage: Proof of Concept
Sensors, with the capacity to measure multiple parameters in parallel, are a critical component in reduction of energy costs, increased health and safety through monitoring of the environment and rapid diagnostic of disease. Research has shown that graphene is ultra sensitive to gas and biomolecules and have the potential to be a million times more accurate than current gas detectors. Our sensors have the flexibility to measure multiple components, can be manufactured at low cost and are ultra-sensitive, enabling rapid and early detection.

Nanowire Alignment and Growth
Researchers: John Boland, Soon Jung Jung
Development Stage: Proof of Concept
Nanowires are key enabling materials in applications ranging from biosensors, to light harvesting systems to electronic devices. All applications share the need for nanowires of controlled composition, placement, crystallinity, diameters and lengths. At present there is no general method which can meet all these requirements. We have developed a method to synthesize single crystal nanowires that involves heating a multilayer film at a significantly lower temperature than other methods. This contrasts with existing techniques which require growth precursors either via gas phase or solution.

Ultrasound Wave Trap Bioreactor
Researchers: Despina Bazou & Marek Radomski
Development Stage: Proof of Concept
It is widely recognised that there is an increasing need to develop strategies for the scale up of cell and tissue culture to meet predicted demands. In response, there is current interest in the use of automated cell and tissue culture systems, the success of which, being critically dependent on monitoring and control strategies. The ultrasound standing wave trap (USWT) meets a demand for a cell culture system in which cells can be manipulated to aggregate whilst suspended in solution within the chamber. This allows in vitro drug analysis to be performed using physiologically authentic cellular matrices. The USWT technology has potential as a platform technology suitable for application to generic cell culture formats in a €500 million worldwide market.

Bi-axial Liquid Crystal Display
Researchers: Jagdish Vij, Yuri Panarin (DIT)
Development Stage: Proof of Concept
Current liquid crystal display (LCD) technologies utilise spatial division colour mode techniques. However this technique reduces pixel resolution as each pixel is divided into 3 subpixels of different colours (R, G, B). A target colour is produced by a combination of these 3 separate sub-pixels. Now these limitations have been overcome with a new class of liquid crystal (a bi-axial smectic) which switches fast enough to allow time sequential colour division - 3 colours in sequence to achieve a target colour in a single pixel.

Electrowinning with Magnetic Fields
Researchers: J.M.D Coey and Damaris Fernandez
Development Stage: Proof of Concept
Copper and Zinc are mined from the earth in the form of oxide or sulfide ores. After further processing they are dissolved in an acid and deposited as pure metal by electrolysis  (“electrowinning”). This is an energy intensive operation using between 2000 and 3000 kWh per tonne produced. Annual energy costs of electrolytic processing are of the order of US$2Bn. Magnetic fields modify mass transport in electrochemistry and using them during electrowinning reduces the power consumption by approximately 20%.

Nanoadditive Polymer Systems
Researchers: Werner Blau, Ramesh Babu
Development Stage: Ready for C ommercialisation
The properties of polymer composites are greatly modified by the addition of nanoadditives. TCD has developed proprietary nanoadditives - organoclays modified with carbon nanotubes - which can be used for high temperature moulding applications (up to 300oC). These functionalised nanoadditives allow one to tune the conductivity / antistatic, thermal performance, physical
and mechanical properties of base polymers using existing polymer processing equipment and techniques. Fuse devices prepared using this technique greatly improved product performance.

Silver Nanoparticle Inks
Researchers: Silver Nanoparticle groups fromNUI Galway and TCD
Development Stage: Ready for Commercialisation
Contact: Pat Kelly, TTO office Ignite, NUI Galway
ArgentInkTM is an aqueous based silver nanoplate conductive ink. These triangular, hexagonal or discshaped silver nanoparticles can be used to print electronic circuitry for photovoltaic, display, sensor and RFID applications. They form highly conductive wires and coatings even at low silver concentrations. Other inherent properties such as their self-assembly, surface plasmon resonance, and anti-microbial efficacy at low silver concentration, open up business opportunities in ransparent conductive electrodes, photovoltaic cells, and wound management. This scaled-up platform technology is immediately commercialisable.

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