Nanotechnologies Entering into Big Business In the past few years, the Czech industrial tradition has acquired a new dimension with the addition of nanotechnologies to its conventional practice. Nanotechnology based on the combination of organic and inorganic components gives rise to new materials that have a variety of uses, for example in medicine, the textile industry, air and water cleaning, and the manufacture of electrical batteries. Since the moment in 2004, when the Technical University in Liberec, in collaboration with Elmarco company, developed, as the first workplace in the world, an industrially usable nanofibre, this new technology has witnessed a dynamic development. Thanks to the physical properties of nano microscopic particles a thousand times thinner than the human hair, this technology has found its way into a number of Czech manufacturing firms. The absolute majority of firms whose core business is the use of nanotechnologies in their operations are born global companies, which operate on the international scale and seek trade partners in other countries.
INVESTORS AND THEIR NEED TO EXPORT
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Currently, more than 15 private research companies and some 70 manufacturers in the Czech Republic use nanotechnologies in their operations. In addition, there are specialised centres in this country to which firms come for consultation to become acquainted with new scientific developments. Twenty-six workplaces of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 37 university faculties, and 9 research organisations financed by the state in the Czech Republic concern themselves with basic research in different nanotechnology areas. Despite being the cradle of nanotechnology research and its practical application, the important thing for the Czech Republic in future is to arouse the interest of investors from neighbouring states, to which Czech firms could export their nano products. All the more so, as firms in as many as 70 regions of the European Union are focusing on nanotechnology research and nanotechnologies are becoming an important instrument of the national economies in their efforts to gain a competitive edge.
WHAT HAVE CZECH FIRMS MANAGED TO ACHIEVE?
According to the Nanotechnology Industry Association of the Czech Republic, this technology does not mean just innovation. In actual fact it signifies a technological change, whereby man can manipulate matter at the molecular level, across all sectors. The portfolio of Czech nanotechnology firms is quite broad. Among other areas, it includes the manufacture of photocatalytic paints with titanium oxide nano particles. This practically transparent paint has an extraordinary ability – to clean the ambient air and remove viruses, bacteria, toxins, and cigarette smoke from it. This principle can be used to reduce air pollution in cities and industrial agglomerations. Recently, a Czech firm filed a patent application for an electrically conductive nanofibre. When electrical current is passed through it, the fibre acquires the capacity to kill viruses and bacteria in contaminated water. The material can be used for different purposes and in different areas, including the military environment and healthcare, and can be useful in third-world countries, where clean water is scarce.
NANOTECHNOLOGY TRIGGERS OFF A REVOLUTION IN MEDICINE
A real breakthrough is the use of nanotechnologies in medicine, where thus far unheard of possibilities are opening up. They can be used in diagnostics, drug distribution within the body, or the treatment of patients with the aid of special nano instruments. And moreover, nano medicine ranges in sizes in the order of billionths of a metre, and this is the size of the particles of which the human body is composed – molecules, the DNA helix, and also a large number of dangerous viruses. By enabling a detailed view of the biological processes, nanotechnology offers a new set of instruments for understanding the sources and mechanisms of diseases. Czech firms are keeping pace in this area and there are good prospects that, together with research laboratories, they will be in a position to offer many more products that will find their way into the world, despite the competition from nanotechnology development in the USA, Japan, and China. C z e c h R e p u b l i c – Yo u r Tr a d e Pa r t n e r 51
