Brewer Science's Steve Turner holds an example of the company's carbon-nanotube-based transparent conductive film. Brewer received federal funds to research the technology, which can be applied to touch screens, LED lighting and solar panels.
Federal funds to support jobs at JVIC
Jennifer Muzinic
Posted online
In December, the U.S. Commerce Department promised as much as $71 million to help fund 20 high-risk research projects for new technologies. Research for one of those projects will take place at the Jordan Valley Innovation Center in Springfield.
Rolla-based research and development company Brewer Science Inc. and Norman, Okla.-based carbon nanotube material vendor SouthWest Nano Technologies Inc. are partnering on a $13.9 million research project to develop high-quality, low-cost carbon nanotube inks that can be used in the manufacturing of new technologies such as touch-screen displays, LED lighting, solar cells and flexible electronics.
The companies will work at separate locations, said Stephen Turner, Brewer Science’s product manager for carbon nanotechnologies, noting that most of his company’s portion of the work will take place in JVIC and SouthWest Nano will work in Norman.
In the three-year cost-sharing project, Brewer and SouthWest Nano are splitting $6.5 million in Commerce funds under a Technology Innovation Program by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Turner said. The remaining $7.4 million for the project comes from private sources, said Michael Baum, public information officer for NIST.
With the NIST funds, Brewer is hiring for six positions, which would double the number of Brewer employees at JVIC. Those jobs are senior process engineer, chemist, applications engineer, research associate, laboratory assistant and manufacturing technician, according to a job post at www.brewerscience.com.
The research project is not necessarily intended to produce a single product at the end of its three-year run, according to Doyle Edwards, director of funding and government relations at Brewer.
“One of things that really attracted us to the NIST Technology Innovation Program was that many times government grants will specify (the scope of the project). This was a little more open,” Edwards said. “We had to make our case that this was important and significant and would contribute to betterment of technology innovation in the U.S.”
The JVIC-based staff works on all of Brewer’s carbon nanotube projects, Turner said, and the research funded by the NIST program, which will focus on the development of low-cost, high-quality metallic and semiconducting single wall carbon nanotube inks, will supplement existing Brewer research.
“(The TIP funding) will allow us to expand our materials development to produce new materials. It’s a lot of money coming in that we would otherwise have to wait for,” he said.
Baum pointed out that the TIP program is different from a grant.
“It’s more of a cooperative agreement. It involves a closer working relationship and more oversight than there would typically be with a grant,” he said, noting that funding recipients will submit quarterly technical and financial reports and take part in annual audits.
TIP staff also will visit research facilities on a regular basis.
Privately-owned Brewer Science operates a manufacturing facility in Rolla and has a cooperative agreement with Nissan Chemical in Japan and regional support offices in the U.S., Asia and Europe, Edwards said. In the last 10 years, Edwards said the company has been taking on more government-funded projects, estimating that 20 percent of the company’s work now comes from public coffers. He attributes the increase in federal funding to a renewed interest in technology manufacturing by the American government.
“It’s becoming more apparent that the U.S. needs to develop more of the world’s technology as the competition between countries increases. Government support has been critical to our success,” Edwards said.
Turner said high-tech manufacturers like carbon nanotubes because they can conduct electricity faster with less power consumption, can be highly transparent and have excellent thermal stability.[[In-content Ad]]
