Speciality Chemicals Magazine JUL / AUG 2021 | Page 37

NANOTECHNOLOGY
Accessing support
The options for accessing nanomaterials from the market are varied , and the decisions made by product development teams will dictate the critical roadmap for commercialisation . A foundational question that often comes up during product development is whether building nanomaterial expertise should be included in the scope of a product development programme . This decision is specific to each organisation , their strategies and goals . When developing nanomaterial competency in-house , it is critical to understand that this requires an organisational commitment financially larger than the scope of product development . Expect to make significant , ongoing investments to build specialised nanomaterial design , scale-up and manufacturing expertise . This will include synthetic design , material characterisation , quality assurance , quality control , engineering and significant capital investments in equipment . These factors , risks and costs all need to be incorporated into the product development roadmap . Given the level of investment and the opportunity cost , most teams prefer to outsource their project to nanomaterial expertise . If so , it is important to understand your options .
Lab-scale providers
Lab-scale materials can be sourced from catalogue companies like
Sigma Aldrich , Alfa Aesar and Strem Chemicals . These will usually be a strong fit for basic research , where proving fundamental science is the goal . However , given the aforementioned nanomaterial design considerations , keep an open mind that these materials may not perform as desired . If you are not achieving the results you expected at this stage in the lab , you could waste a lot of time finding out whether your experimental hypothesis or the design of the material is the problem . Typically , these materials are supplied to catalogue companies by small research organisations , who rarely have significant scale-up , manufacturing or QC capabilities .
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