NANOSTELLAR’S NS GOLD OXIDATION CATALYST NAMED ONE OF
THE YEAR’S MOST INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS

Industry Experts Validate Nanostellar’s Technology Innovation and Projected Impact on Multi-Billion Dollar Automotive Diesel Catalyst Market

 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—Aug. 1, 2007— Nanostellar, Inc., a leader in nano-engineered catalyst materials, announced today that its NS Gold™ catalyst has been named one of the most innovative products of 2007. In their annual Micro/Nano 25 Awards touting the “technologies of tomorrow,” the editors of R&D Magazine and Micro/Nano Newsletter recognized Nanostellar for its innovation in developing a first in diesel emissions technology: the use of gold as an oxidation catalyst. Nanostellar finds itself in very elite company as other winners of this year’s award include: Georgia Institute of Technology, HP Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Sandia National Laboratories.

“This award provides further validation of what our customers are experiencing and independent labs have proven: that our NS Gold product is poised to make a profound impact on the automotive industry as manufacturers use our product to meet emissions-control compliance regulations more efficiently than ever before,” said Pankaj Dhingra, CEO of Nanostellar. “Consumers are demanding cleaner air and more fuel-efficient methods of transportation. As more automotive OEMs roll out clean-diesel vehicles in the next three to five years to address that demand, they’ll need catalyst materials that are both higher performing and more cost-effective than traditional materials.”

The Micro/Nano 25 Awards are presented to the developers of the most innovative and most groundbreaking products, processes, inventions, discoveries, or innovations in micro- and nanotechnology in the past year, and those having the largest impact on a specific industry or society in general. Nanostellar and the other award recipients are featured in the July 2007 issue of Micro/Nano Newsletter and the August 2007 issue of R&D Magazine. For more information and a complete listing of this year’s winners, please visit: www.rdmag.com/pdf/RD0707_Materials.pdf.
 
Industry-First Product Addresses Multi-Billion Dollar Market
In an industry dominated by large companies with annual research and development budgets exceeding $100 million, three-year-old Nanostellar stands out as it was able to bring a better product to market in a fraction of the time due to its breakthrough Rational Catalyst Design methodology, which combines computational approaches with targeted experiments to accelerate the development of new materials.

Nanostellar launched its first-generation product, based on a platinum and palladium alloy, in mid-2006. That product achieved 25-30 percent higher performance than commercial pure-platinum catalysts, and has been shipping to customers with several diesel aftermarket applications.

In April, Nanostellar introduced NS Gold, a diesel emissions control material that independent testing has determined to be 15-20 percent better than Nanostellar’s first-generation platinum and palladium alloy catalyst.

Platinum usage for diesel emissions control exceeded $2 billion in 2006, and is expected to double by 2010. The rising need for platinum in diesel emissions control represents a very large market opportunity for Nanostellar, which estimates that the market for its automotive diesel catalyst powders will reach roughly $1 billion in 2010.

Product for Today, Platform for Tomorrow
Nanostellar is developing and implementing an innovative methodology for designing high-performance catalyst materials that will fundamentally alter traditional materials research, enabling development of complex new materials in a fraction of the time. The traditional materials development process is driven by an empirical approach and involves a significant amount of time-consuming lab work. In contrast, Nanostellar’s Rational Catalyst Design methodology uses quantum physics-based models to develop a fundamental understanding of chemical reactions and material properties and uses this knowledge to design new materials. By substituting fast and inexpensive computational cycles for tedious lab work, Rational Catalyst Design enables the design of better-targeted materials.

Although Nanostellar has focused its initial efforts on developing catalyst materials for automotive emissions control, the Rational Catalyst Design methodology is universal and Nanostellar plans to use this approach to develop catalysts for other clean-technology applications in the near future.