Jan. 9, 2007 -- NovaCentrix, an Austin, Texas, nanotechnology products company with a focus on applications in printable electronics, life sciences, and energetics, announced advancements to allow high volume production of nanopowders.

NovaCentrix said it completed these efforts to meet current and future commercial application demands, including the shipment of a large order of aluminum nanoparticles in the second half of 2006. NovaCentrix said its large-scale commercial production equipment is now capable of producing metric tons materials annually.

"Nanometals production is an area where large-scale commercialization has been elusive," said Steve Leach, CEO of NovaCentrix, in a prepared statement. "NovaCentrix has broken the barriers by utilizing rigorous production process scaling techniques as learned from high volume semiconductor and computer manufacturing. While our production scalability is a testament to our technical capabilities, it addresses real marketplace needs in printable electronics, life sciences, and energetics."

Over the past year, NovaCentrix said it has focused considerable effort on the development of commercial scale production of high-performance nanopowders of essentially any conductive inorganic material. The company utilizes its proprietary pulsed-plasma synthesis process to offer high performance and yet economical metal nanoparticles ranging from as small as 1 nm to 120 nm. NovaCentrix also produces a select range of high performance nanoscale oxides, such as iron oxide and niobium pentoxide.

To serve its target markets, the company is developing Metalon inks, a full portfolio of nanoscale conductive inks for printable electronics applications. NovaCentrix says Metalon inks are suited for high speed printing processes given that they are formulated from pure and discrete nanoscale silver and copper particles.

NovaCentrix has made available Metalon JS-011, a water-based, electrically conductive silver ink especially formulated for ink jet printers, and Metalon FS-066, a stretchable, conductive ink formulated to adhere to flexible substrates, and stretchable up to 100 percent while maintaining conductivity performance. For the life science applications, NovaCentrix' Effisil silver additives are used in FDA approved wound care products.