Small is beautiful, says the old adage. In the world of nanotechnology, small can also be powerful, game-changing, and capable of creating new types of materials with properties that have never been possible before. Working at atomic and molecular levels, and using multidisciplinary chemical, physical, biological, and engineering techniques, nanotechnology developers have proven they can successfully manipulate matter to produce specially-coated smart nano-materials that promise a vast array of possibilities for companies to create brand new classes of products across multiple industries – from healthcare to clothing, from construction to lighting, from satellites to automotive.
The complexity of the production and coating process however, is expensive and difficult to scale, a problem that has held back nano-technology development in its pursuit of mass-market deployment. 2017 Manufacturing Leadership Award winner, Pixelligent Technologies, believes it may have an answer – an innovative manufacturing process that promises to deliver coated nanotechnology materials at a commercial scale.
In our latest Dialogue with a manufacturing industry thought leader, Craig Bandes, President and CEO of Pixelligent Technologies, talks with Executive Editor Paul Tate about the potential of nano-materials to usher in a new paradigm for industrial and consumer products, the company’s approach to developing and scaling its own nano-particle manufacturing process, the PixClearProcess™, and the importance of transformational innovation to the future of manufacturing.
Q: How did you get involved with Pixelligent?
A: I became involved with the company during the turnaround in 2009, initially working as the chief restructuring officer and then joined as President and CEO once we emerged from Chapter 11. After locking things down post the reorganization and bringing in some additional capital, my next focus was understanding why such an incredibly innovative and potentially valuable technology had, for the most part, failed to come to market as a viable commercial product. I took a deep dive across the nanotech landscape to try and understand what so many promising nanotech companies had failed. The critical insight for me was realizing that it really all came down to manufacturing, and getting the manufacturing team involved early in the material development process. This is the only way you bring breakthrough science to market in a robust way and make it accessible to a broad set of customers in some of the biggest, most technically stringent markets in the world.
