QuantumSphere has assembled a world-class business and scientific team. The Company’s seasoned industry veterans have consistently demonstrated the ability to develop, launch, build, and scale successful products and businesses. QuantumSphere has established a proven reputation by delivering superior advanced catalysts and integrated product solutions for multiple portable power and clean energy applications, demonstrating high capital efficiency and attracting blue-chip customers and partners.

Intellectual Property

The patent for QuantumSphere’s gas phase condensation (GPC) process was awarded October 16, 2007 and includes dozens of broad claims on the manufacturing system that produces advanced materials, high surface area catalysts at the nano scale. QSI has additional patent applications pending related to composition of nano alloys, process chemistries, and commercial devices (high rate electrodes for metal-air batteries and fuel cells) enabled by the use of QSI’s advanced catalyst materials and integrated catalytic solutions.

Competing Technologies

Synthetic or man-made nanoscale materials were first created in the 1970s using the GPC method. Today, there are dozens of processes for producing nanoscale materials worldwide. These processes include chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, reactive sputtering, laser pyrolysis, plasma gun spray conversion, mechanical alloying, grinding and sol gel. Most of these processes are relatively expensive and require sophisticated and complex equipment and labor intensive maintenance. In addition, these methods may result in products with inconsistent particle size, distribution, shape and impurities with little ability to scale up to commercial quantities at reasonable prices.

Our Process

QuantumSphere’s patented process is safe, environmentally friendly, fully automated and requires low supervision and little down time for reactor maintenance. Unlike competitive processes, we have literally removed the potential for human error and expensive labor from the manufacturing equation. Our increased production rates combined with lower labor and conversion costs have enabled commercial application of these advanced materials by industry leading companies commercializing multiple consumer and industrial products. With the ability to deliver high quality nanoscale catalysts in commercial quantities at reasonable prices, QuantumSphere and its partners are opening the door to allow for mass market penetration and accelerated commercialization of these new advanced materials.

Catalysts Impact Chemical Reactions

Key to understanding nanotechnology is grasping the underlying concepts of how catalysts – and their surface area – impact chemical reactions by reducing the required activation energy. Catalysts help facilitate more efficient chemical reactions: the higher the surface area of the catalyst, the faster or more efficient the chemical reaction.

QSI’s advanced catalysts have superior properties including their spherical shape, oxide layer, crystalline structure, and very large surface area. This translates into higher reaction activity and greater efficiency in the generation, storage, and use of energy.

In addition to speeding up certain chemical reactions, catalysts also can be used to alter the temperature and pressure at which various thermal and electro-chemical reactions take place and, thus, make them more efficient. Nanocatalysts represent the convergence of catalysts, a mature technology, with a new one, nanotechnology. Nanocatalysts are nanoscale materials (typically under 100 nanometers in size) that have been subjected to nanoscale structural modification in order to enhance their catalytic activity by increasing the active surface area, resulting in unique physical properties with superior performance.

Size Matters: Unique Properties of Nano Materials

Another essential element is size and scale: a nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter, or 1000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, or roughly the size of a marble when compared to the earth. QSI catalysts typically measure in the 30-60 nm range. Nanotechnology involves the fabrication of materials and devices with atomic or molecular-scale precision. It requires the control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1-100 nms, tiny particles that can be seen only with the most powerful electron microscopes. The unique physical, chemical, and biological properties of nano materials differ fundamentally from the properties of larger particles. As size decreases to the nanoscale, there is a corresponding increase in surface area and surface energy. Nanotechnology focuses on understanding and creating improved materials, devices, and systems to exploit these novel properties.