Apr 23 2007
Advance Nanotech, Inc., a leading provider of financing and support services to drive the commercialization of nanotechnology-related products for homeland security and display technologies, today announced the official launch date of Lonestar, the next-generation chemical detection system, and second product line, to be manufactured by Owlstone Nanotech, Inc, a majority owned corporation within Advance Homeland Security, a subsidiary of Advance Nanotech, Inc.
Lonestar will be unveiled at the annual International Society for Ion Mobility Spectrometry (ISIMS) conference, to be held in Mikkeli, Finland on July 21, 2007.
Lonestar is a stand-alone chemical detection system based on the Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer (FAIMS) technology. Building on the Tourist product, which went on the market in 2006, Lonestar combines a MEMS-based FAIMS sensor with greatly improved sampling and electronics to provide superior detection capability. Configured to operate in ambient, or “open air” environments, Lonestar is designed to meet a broad range of customer applications in the multi-billion dollar homeland defense and industrial process control markets.
The Homeland Security market has an urgent operational requirement for a miniaturized, low power, low false positive chemical and explosive detector to be used by military personnel and first responders to detect chemical agents and toxic chemicals. Lonestar offers a significant technological achievement with its proprietary FAIMS technology – it can detect airborne gases down to levels of a few parts per billion – and provides increased selectivity, sensitivity and decreased size that existing Ion Mobility Spectrometers cannot match.
“We are excited to have the opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of our new FAIMS technology at the premier conference for the ion mobility community”, said Alastair Taylor, Owlstone’s Product Manager. Bret Bader, Owlstone CEO, added, “Building on the success of our first product, Tourist, Lonestar further enables Owlstone to deliver new and improved solutions that better meet the demands of the chemical detection market.”
Tony Goncalves, CEO of Advance Nanotech, commented, “Based on the strong, positive response to the Tourist system since its debut in August 2006, we expect Lonestar will rapidly have a major impact on the industrial and homeland security markets. The Tourist introduced our innovative proprietary technology to the market; Lonestar takes that technology to a significantly higher level of performance and marketability.”