Additionally, Zyvex will immediately open its first satellite facility in the recently established Black Hills Business Development Center located in Rapid City, South Dakota. Zyvex-South Dakota will initially manufacture pilot-scale quantities of Zyvex’s NanoSolve® material, and will also become a major user of the School of Mines' CAPE Laboratory, utilizing those facilities to produce and characterize new nanomaterial-based products. Work has already begun in the facility for Zyvex's sporting goods customers, with a production rate of up to 800 pounds of NanoSolve Enhanced Epoxy per month. This material is used to make carbon fiber composite structures even stronger and stiffer, and is finding significant acceptance in the high performance sporting good market.
“Zyvex’s nanomaterials business has grown significantly this year,” Zyvex Founder and Chairman Jim Von Ehr said. “We have been looking for a production facility to allow us to scale up to tons of NanoSolve concentrate per month. We have also been renting access to processing and characterization equipment at other universities to supplement our own development lab. The polymer center is a superb facility and we are thrilled to establish a branch there to commercialize new nanocomposite materials.”
The establishment of Zyvez-South Dakota is not the first partnership between the School of Mines and the nanotechnology company. In 2005, Zyvex designated the School of Mines as the exclusive provider of integrated circuit (IC) failure analysis services to the semi-conductor industry.
Under the agreement, Zyvex outsources all of its testing services to the Center for Accelerated Applications at the Nanoscale (CAAN), located at the School of Mines. The agreement requires the use of the most advanced integrated system developed for IC probing and nanomanipulation, and the School of Mines is the first university to have this type of fully integrated system installed and operational.
“Our partnership with Zyvex has already been tremendously successful, and we look forward to it becoming even more so in the future,” School of Mines President Dr. Charles Ruch said. “The continuance of this outstanding partnership is thanks to the work of our many partners, including those in the Office of the Governor, the Office of Economic Development, Black Hills Vision, the Black Hills Business Development Center, and many more.”
The presence of nanotechnology on the School of Mines campus goes far beyond the partnership with Zyvex.
Established in 2004, the Center for Accelerated Applications at the Nanoscale was created through the governor’s 2010 initiative, part of which is aimed at growing the state’s economy by targeting investments in specialized research at South Dakota public universities. CAAN is a multi-investigator and multi-disciplinary effort that involves faculty and research staff from numerous departments at three of the State’s research institutions. The Center emphasizes applied research and development on a variety of nanomaterials applications with commercial potential.
Aligning with the focus of CAAN is the School of Mines’ Ph.D. program in nanoscience and nanoengineering. The program is a cross-disciplinary degree in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Students benefit from faculty expertise in theory and modeling and computational physics, theory and applications of nanocomposite materials, direct-write fabrication of electronics, and synthesis and processing of inorganic and organic nano-scaled materials.
Students also work closely on research involving nanotechnology. Recent grants have provided funding for research involving semiconductor spintronics, new types of dental fillings, and flexible antennas.
The School of Mines is also the lead institution for the North-Central Nanosystems Consortium that includes faculty at research universities in South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
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