Company Profile: NanoIntegris Technologies, Inc.
Overview
NanoIntegris Technologies, Inc. is a leading global deep-tech innovator and premier manufacturer of high-purity, electronically separated single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), graphene, and advanced 1D/2D nanomaterials. Founded in January 2007 as a highly specialized spin-off out of the Hersam Research Group at Northwestern University, the company is headquartered in Boisbriand, Quebec, Canada. In 2012, NanoIntegris was strategically acquired by Raymor Industries, a prominent industrial-scale producer of raw carbon nanomaterials.
Operating under this unified framework, NanoIntegris acts as the precise purification, separation, and formulation engine for the parent company?s raw output. The company serves thousands of top-tier academic research institutions, aerospace contractors, and commercial semiconductor fabs globally. By providing materials with mathematically defined electronic, geometric, and chemical behaviors, NanoIntegris bridges the historic gap between foundational nanotechnology concepts and scalable, market-ready microelectronics, energy storage systems, and smart materials.
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Core Separation & Purification Technologies
When carbon nanotubes are synthesized via standard industrial methods (such as arc-discharge, laser ablation, or plasma torch processing), the resulting raw material is a chaotic, highly heterogeneous soot. This mixture typically consists of roughly two-thirds semiconducting tubes and one-third metallic (conductive) tubes, bundled alongside heavy structural defects, amorphous carbon waste, and metal catalyst residues. For precision computing, this raw soot is unusable?a single trace metallic nanotube inside a microscopic transistor pathway induces a short-circuit, causing systemic chip failure.
NanoIntegris achieved international prominence by commercializing two breakthrough, non-destructive chemical separation methodologies that sort these raw mixtures down to the molecular level:
1. Density Gradient Ultracentrifugation (DGU)
Developed fundamentally at Northwestern University, DGU uses surfactant encapsulation to isolate nanotubes in an aqueous solution. Under immense, controlled gravitational forces inside high-speed ultracentrifuges, nanotubes shift to highly specific, predictable zones in a density column based on their precise diameters, chiralities, and structural buoyant densities. DGU permits the extraction of ultra-high-purity, structurally pristine semiconducting or metallic fractions with zero chemical damage to the native carbon lattices.
2. Conjugated Polymer Extraction (CPE / Polymer-Wrapping)
To solve the historic throughput limits associated with ultracentrifugation, NanoIntegris and Raymor scaled up a highly scalable industrial separation method. This technique utilizes custom-engineered conjugated polymers that exhibit a selective affinity for the spatial geometry of semiconducting nanotubes. The polymers selectively wrap around the semiconducting variants, pulling them cleanly into non-polar aromatic solvents while leaving metallic tubes and carbonaceous junk behind, facilitating high-volume, automated batch processing.
Products and Technical Offerings
The NanoIntegris product matrix comprises specialized electronic inks, purified dry powders, and advanced two-dimensional smart sheets:
1. Electronically Separated Carbon Nanotube Inks & Powders
- IsoNanotubes? (Semiconducting & Metallic): High-purity single-walled carbon nanotube formulations engineered in either aqueous or aromatic solution formats. The semiconducting variants are available at verified electronic purities ranging from 99% up to a record 99.9% and 99.99%, functioning as printable, high-mobility semiconducting channels. The metallic variants are isolated at 99% purity, optimized for isotropic conductive networks.
- IsoSol-S100?: A flagship line of polymer-wrapped, highly enriched semiconducting SWNT inks dispersed in organic solvents. IsoSol-S100 is engineered explicitly for high-throughput automated printing deposition (such as inkjet, gravure, and aerosol-jet methodologies), bypassing the need for tedious post-deposition surfactant rinsing steps.
- PureTubes? & SuperPureTubes?: Highly purified, unseparated nanotube frameworks designed for structural composites, thermal management interfaces, and biological screening. These formulations exhibit exceptionally low metal catalyst residues (less than 1% to 1.5% by mass) and minimal amorphous carbon junk.
- HiPco? SWNTs: Small-diameter single-walled carbon nanotubes (ranging from 0.8 to 1.2 nanometers in diameter) processed through a specialized high-pressure carbon monoxide disproportionation license, offering a tight, predictable structural distribution.
2. Advanced Smart Materials & 2D Sheets
- PureWave Graphene / PureSheets?: High-quality, few-layer graphene flakes (typically 1 to 4+ layers) manufactured via advanced liquid-phase exfoliation of pristine graphite. Free from destructive acid treatments, these sheets preserve maximum native electrical and thermal conductivities, optimized for integration into next-generation battery anodes and conductive structural polymers.
- Boron Nitride Nanotubes (BNNTs): A novel, highly specialized multi-walled structural material composed of alternating boron and nitrogen atoms. While structurally mirroring carbon nanotubes, BNNTs are electrical insulators that exhibit extreme thermal conductivity, high mechanical strength, and profound radiation shielding capabilities.
Primary Applications and Industry Use Cases
NanoIntegris material architectures function as key technological enablers across four high-value commercial and aerospace sectors:
Next-Generation Field-Effect Transistors (CNT-FETs)
The company?s 99.9% and 99.99% pure semiconducting inks serve as the base channel material for flexible, transparent, and high-frequency thin-film transistors. These carbon-based microchips achieve carrier mobilities far exceeding traditional amorphous silicon, operating reliably at low threshold voltages while opening up paths toward flexible smartphone displays and conformable smart wearable electronics.
Advanced Battery Infrastructure
NanoIntegris and Raymor work closely with energy storage networks to incorporate high-purity few-layer graphene and conductive plasma-etched nanotubes directly into advanced lithium-ion and sodium-ion battery form factors. Acting as a structural, hyper-conductive additive within active anode and cathode slurries, the nanomaterials reduce internal impedance, improve structural resilience against thermal expansion, and drastically speed up electron transferring velocities.
Chip-Scale Photonics and High-Frequency RF Devices
By exploiting the unique electronic bandgaps of diameter-sorted nanotubes, aerospace engineers utilize NanoIntegris materials to print high-frequency communication arrays. These configurations regularly cross record-breaking operating frequencies above 80 GHz, facilitating low-overhead signal processing within radar configurations, macro-satellite links, and chip-scale optical emitters.
Biochemical Sensoring & Flex-Pressure Diagnostics
The profound surface-area-to-volume ratio of isolated carbon platforms makes them incredibly responsive to environmental variations. They are deployed extensively to print flexible matrix sensors, rapid-response medical test strips (such as real-time viral surface spike-protein biosensors), and large-scale industrial pressure-sensitive smart fabrics.
