Jun 21 2010
Based on its recent analysis of the nanomaterial encapsulation technology market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Vive Nano with the 2010 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation for a unique encapsulation technology to synthesize nanoparticles.
Vive Nano's current industry focus is on crop protection, with subsequent applications identified in cosmetics, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, and other industrial markets. The company has several off-the-shelf products based on its technology and has established customers globally.
Pesticide formulation is a core issue in the agri-food industry. Pesticide active ingredients for crop protection need to be uniformly spread in small amounts over a large area. Towards this end, it is ideally desired that pesticide particles should not agglomerate. Furthermore, formulations of pesticides should effectively address some key industry concerns such as higher manufacturing costs, harmful environment effects, and help deliver an active ingredient which has higher initial and residual efficacy. Among the various formulation techniques, encapsulation, in which the active ingredient is encapsulated by a synthetic or biological polymer to allow for prolonged release of the pesticide over a period of time, has gained prominence in recent years due to the long term advantages it offers.
Vive Nano's unique core collapse technology addresses some of the key industry challenges. Vive Nano follows a wet chemistry process wherein nanoparticles are produced inside a charged polymer template. The term "core collapse" comes from the fact that the charged polymers are neutralized by precursor ions, making the polymers "collapse" around the "core" ions resulting in a final nanoparticle with a polymer stabilizer around it. One of the key attributes of Vive Nano's technology is that the charged polymer surrounding the core repels other "like charged" polymers thereby preventing agglomeration and helps maintain the nano size of the particle. "Vive Nano's technology offers some key advantages such as its ability to create nano particles for most chemicals on the periodic table and high scalability in manufacturing that allow it to scale to thousands of tons," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Avinash Bhaskar. "Further, the technology does not need a dedicated plant and is easy and cost-effective to implement."
Vive Nano's initial testing has successfully demonstrated that its nano technology-based formulated active ingredient is highly effective for killing weeds while avoiding the problematic chemical additives that are leading to product bans in a growing number of major markets. Vive Nano's nanoparticles have the potential to result in improved crop yield and reduced environmental impact. Its nanoparticles can load a variety of hydrophobic molecules – including those commonly used to deliver fragrance and color, as well as many pharmaceuticals – and have also shown the potential to efficiently remove hydrophobes from water.
"Competing solutions are still in their respective research stages, waiting for credible evidence on the impact of the technology in the agri-chemical sector," notes Avinash Bhaskar. "Additionally, they use a complicated process of synthesizing nanoparticles, which involves multiple solvents and cumbersome steps of drying that might result in relatively larger nanoparticles."
Using techniques like grinding, the various competing solutions are plagued with difficulty in achieving sizes less that 0.5 micro meter in particle diameter. However, Vive Nano starts with the diameter of the particle in the nano range and maintains the nano diameter of the particle throughout the process. Smaller particle size helps in achieving easier stability and dispersion. Vive Nano's nanoparticles are water-soluble, which helps in effective administration of pesticides for crop protection.
Vive Nano's technology is more economically viable when compared to competing solutions. Its cost-effectiveness coupled with various other benefits makes Vive Nano's solution highly relevant to the cost-sensitive crop protection industry, which also places huge emphasis on environmentally safe products. For these achievements, Vive Nano is the worthy recipient of the 2010 Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation in the North American nanomaterial encapsulation market. The Technology Innovation Award recognizes the uniqueness of a technology, its impact on new products/applications, and their value to customer, all of which ultimately drives the overall industry.
Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
Source: http://www.frost.com/