BUSINESS

FROM SMALL THINGS, BIG THINGS WILL COME For Germany's Degussa, Nanotronics center is new way to turn nanotech research into products

NEXT APRIL, DEGUSSA WILL IN-

augurate its new Nanotronics science-to-business center in Marl, Germany That's a short 10 months after the company's

executives and representatives of local and state governments and the academic com­munity laid the center's foundation stone in a gala ceremony at the end of June.

Over the next five years, Degussa will in­vest some $60 million in the center, which is intended to develop "innovative solution systems for electronics applications in col­laboration with universities and industrial cooperation partners." In the past four years, the company says, it has invested about $120 million in nanomaterials.

The center was designed by the archi­tectural firm Henn Architekten to facili­tate employee networking. As architect Gunter Henn reasoned: "Eighty percent of all innovation comes because of personal contact. Look at the old ways buildings were built—people were locked up in lit­tle rooms, unable to communicate with each other." Hence the new center's em­phasis on areas for informal discussion.

About 100 scientists, including all Marl-based employees of the Degussa subsidiary Creavis Technologies & Innovation, will be working in the nanomaterials field at the center's laboratories and pilot plants.

The center will pull together Degussa's

already extensive work in electronics with partners up and down the value chain. One of the center's first projects will be mate­rials for high-performance lithium ion bat­teries used in automotive and profession­al power tool applications. Another will be solar cells that don't require costly glass covers. Other projects include printable electronics and low-cost displays.

Unlike the company's "project houses," which feature internal collaboration across business units and divisions, the new cen­ter looks outside to commercial partners and universities for collaboration. Also un­like the project houses, which have a finite life, the center is planned as a permanent addition to the company's operations.

One element characterizing the cen­ter is the integration of collaborations with universities in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., and the temporary integration of staff of universities, research foundations, and institutes.

This concept, suggested Degussa Chair­man Utz-Hellmuth Felcht, should appeal to researchers while improving the climate for innovation in Germany "We should be more focused on how we deploy our R&D budgets, and give our top research projects greater support," he said. 'At the same time, we need to give our first-rate scien­tists and engineers good prospects for the future in Germany as well, and stop them

COLLABORATION Oberholz wants to increase cooperation with academia.

from emigrating, particularly to the U.S." Another element is joint development

with suppliers and customers along the val­ue chain with a goal of accelerating time to market. The center will aid integration from pure nanotechnology research through to marketable commercial products, said Al­fred Oberholz, board member responsible for R&D at Degussa "We intend to use sci­entific discoveries made in the new center and to quickly convert them into innova­tive products," he promised.

Nanochemistry and nanotechnology are well-known research areas, Oberholz point­ed out, "but they are mosdy pursued only for specialty products. We want to replace this single-product approach with one that takes the value chain fully into consideration. Ver­tical integration is the concept."

IN ADDITION TO its own investment in the center, Degussa has received nearly $10 million in subsidies, half from the govern­ment of the North Rhine Westphalia state and half from the European Union.

The Marl site—Degussa's largest site worldwide, part of the dowry brought by merger partner Huls—is in the Ruhr re­gion, which was marked in the past by a concentration of heavy industry and min­ing. Some of the industries that will be in­volved in the new center's discoveries, such as the printing and textile industries, are still located there.

Other traditional industries—mining in particular—have been drying up, ex­posing the region to high unemployment and underutilized infrastructure. Hence the state's efforts to invest in more re­search-oriented programs.

However, Felcht said: "We have never started a research project because we got funding—only because we believe the proj­ect is inherently sound. Of course, we are grateful for the support, for the help, but the fact that the state gives us grants indi­cates their interest in fostering coopera­tion between industry and universities."

Added Harald Schartau, minister of eco­nomics and labor for the state: "We want to find innovative means of technology transfer [from academia to industry]. The traditional ways, from universities out, have become outmoded. This center has opened a new way of cooperation. That's why we made the grant."

"I look forward," Felcht concluded, "to all the people at the new center enjoying a lot of creativity and fun, and huge success with their projects."—PATRICIA SHORT

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