The Regional Monitor

Self-cleaning glass, intelligent textiles, and even talking food packaging: these are just some of the innovations made possible by nanotechnology. However, making sure great inventions become great innovations – and real products – remains a challenge.

The ability to make novel materials from tiny particles, or ordered clusters of atoms – nanotechnology – can result in the discovery of some remarkable properties. This can help us meet the growing desire of consumers for new ‘functional’ products and create breakthrough technologies, which could help address energy and environmental issues.

Nano-scale research can give existing materials new or significantly enhanced capabilities, and could lead to applications including high-efficiency fuel cells, super-lightweight cars, targeted drug delivery or recyclable waste. The future market for such products is estimated to be worth at least £65bn to the UK by 2015.

Whilst the science base has been developing rapidly in recent years, the generation of products that benefit society has been modest and some radical change is needed to accelerate adoption. So where does nano-manufacturing fit in with this?

Nano-manufacturing describes the process that enables large-scale and high-throughput manufacture of nano-enabled products, to meet market volume and price demands.

This contrasts with many existing nano-enterprises, which focus on low-volume, high-value specialist products.

Often, a practical bottleneck exists in taking a discovery to production, sometimes because the invention was not conceived with the end application in mind. As a result, manufacture may be simply too costly, perhaps due to an inability to scale-up the process, in the amount of energy needed or through the creation of unacceptable waste byproducts.

The challenge of how to bring about such a change, against a background of outstanding invention but poor innovation, is being addressed in Yorkshire. Groups, wholly funded by regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, have been set up to develop nano-manufacturing, building on underpinning research council and industrial support valued at over £50m. These university teams are identifying distinctive, world-leading skills, and funding facilities to encourage bolder and more radical innovation methodologies for idea-fusion and interdisciplinary research.

Over £5m has been invested in teams at the universities of Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and York. New core facilities have been built, notably world-leading characterisation capabilities (York), polymer and micro-moulding (Bradford/Sheffield) and nano-particulate products (Leeds Institute of Nanomanufacturing).

Effective signposting has been achieved through the Nanofactory portal (www.nanofactory.org) – giving industry a single point of entry to facilities, research and training capabilities across all the regional university providers, and providing a brokerage for innovation. Nanofactory is connecting researchers with the whole supply chain of professional service providers, from industrial suppliers through to manufacturers in industries including pharmaceuticals, healthcare and personal products.

Examples of emerging products include new sports equipment that is tough but lightweight, and thermal nano-fluids to make heating systems more efficient. These products have arisen as a result of technology push and market pull, but history suggests the former may be the more dominant mechanism for the more radical innovations.

In future invention and innovation will go hand in hand, with multiple inventions residing in single consumer products, resulting in truly radical innovations.

Boldness, creativity, interdisciplinary working, internationalism and determination will be required. Our vision and belief is that these lay the foundation for a powerful engine, leading to a new era for manufacturing and enterprise in Yorkshire.