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Obducat Prize 2007 Award Selection Committee announce its decision
Of the submitted proposals, two exhibited a unique combination of advanced technical content together with a clear commercial potential. Other factors that have been taken into account when evaluating the proposals are scientific quality, manufacturability, commercial market potential and time-to-market.
Winner of Obducat Prize
- Wei Hu, Robert J. Wilson, AiLeen Koh, Aihua Fu, Anthony Z. Faranesh, Christopher M. Earhart, Sebastian J. Osterfeld, Shu-Jen Han, Liang Xu, Samira Guccione, Robert Sinclair, and Shan X Wang at Stanford University, USA -
The winner of Obducat Prize 2007 is Materials Science and Engineering Geballe Lab for Advanced Materials at Stanford University. They have very clearly described and demonstrated a technology based on NIL that show both large innovation quality and great promise for a multitude of possible applications, in combination with a clear commercial potential levering the employment of NIL into new business sectors.
In their technology they showed the realization of a lift-off based NIL technology in combination with an evaporation technology of magnetic and non-magnetic materials allowing mono-sized synthetic anti-ferromagnetic nano-particles to be fabricated and further dissolved and stabilized in a liquid. These mono-dispersed nanoparticles may, as a function of the various layer thicknesses and compositions of the materials being evaporated, exhibit certain properties, e.g. they possess tailored magnetic properties. Hence, these nanoparticles, with tailored magnetic properties, can be employed in multiplex magnetic labeling for bio-detection purposes, e.g. as a magnetic tag allowing e.g. sorting of biomolecules attached to the surfaces of various nanoparticles. Further, the magnetic properties of the particles may be combined with other properties, optical, radioactive and/or electronical, creating multi-modular nanoparticles in order to make more complex kinds of e.g. sensor structures. Further, the magnetic particles may be used for magnetic detection of nanoparticles, multiplexed magnetic sorting, and multi-modal molecular imaging. Hence, the NIL-based technology has a generic character and it may be exploited in many various areas of science and education and business.
The main innovation in the present work is the first demonstration of high saturation magnetic moment, monodisperse, and antiferromagnetic nanoparticles in aqueous solution with tunable magnetic properties and multiplex functionality by employing nanoimprinting-based direct physical fabrication. Since magnetic nanoparticles are widely used or studied in materials, physics, nanotechnology, engineering, biotechnology (e.g., magnetic sorting and separation), cancer (e.g., MRI), and medicine (drug delivery and hyperthermia), we believe this new technology to be exploited in many areas of applications with large market potentials. The expected time-to-market is anticipated to materialize in the near future.
“Runner-up” in Obducat Prize
- Zhijun Hu, Alain M. Jonas at the Research Center on Micro- and Nanoscopic Materials and Electronic Devices at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium-
“Runner-up” in Obducat Prize 2007 is Dr. Zhijun Hun and Dr. Alain M. Jonas at the Research Center on Micro- and Nanoscopic Materials and Electronic Devices at the Université catholique de Louvain. Based on nanoimprint lithography, the authors have developed a technology for rapidly fabricating nanostructures of (semi-)conducting polymers combined with a controlled self-assembly process of molecules or molecular building blocks in the nanostructures. The authors have demonstrated that NIL can be used to massively fabricate arrays of nanowires of conjugated polymers, simultaneously involving the preferential alignment of chains perpendicular or parallel to the nanowire axis, resulting in significantly improved optical or electrical performance of nano-device prototypes. The technology is considered to be of importance for organic electronics and it has a large possible future commercial potential.
The Obducat Prize Award Selection Committee consisted of Prof Lars Montelius from Lund University, Department of Physics & The Nanometer Structure Consortium & Obducat Board member, Henri Bergstrand, Chairman of the Obducat Board and Patrik Lundström, CEO of Obducat.
First prize: Cash € 4000 + Award Diploma
Second prize: Cash € 1000 + Award Diploma
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