From "Controlled Propulsion of Artificial Magnetic Nanostructured Propellers," by Ambarish Ghosh and Peer Fischer

It’s a new kind of nano-swimmer, functionally similar to the rotating flagella found on bacteria.  [...]]]> This neat widget just published in Nano Letters, in a paper published by Ambarish Ghosh and Peer Fischer from Harvard, “Controlled Propulsion of Artificial Magnetic Nanostructured Propellers.”

From "Controlled Propulsion of Artificial Magnetic Nanostructured Propellers," by Ambarish Ghosh and Peer Fischer

It’s a new kind of nano-swimmer, functionally similar to the rotating flagella found on bacteria.  This caught my eye because at the Advanced Energy Consortium, we’ve been looking for nano-thingies that can propel themselves to explore oil reservoirs.  The authors are more oriented towards biological applications, of course.  I think we’re going to see a number of new flavors of self-propelled nanoswimmers appear (at least I hope so).  The first one came from Ayusman Sen and Tom Mallouk at Penn State a couple of years ago; the videos on Sen’s website are great.  They also just published a great article on their catalytic nanomotors in Scientific American.  I think it’s still on the newstand.

Lithium ion transport is apparently limited by diffusion of lithium ions on the surface of lithium ion phosphate particles [...]]]> Researchers at MIT, led by Prof. Gerbrand Ceder, have improved the charge (and discharge) rate of lithium ion battery material by a factor of ~30.  The work is reported in Nature and at the MIT website. 

Lithium ion transport is apparently limited by diffusion of lithium ions on the surface of lithium ion phosphate particles to ‘tunnels’ that provide access into/out of the interior of the particles.  The MIT team coated the particles with about 5 nm of a highly conductive (for Li ions) film of phosphate glass, which allows the ions to get to the access tunnels faster.  I reckon that this phosphate glass ‘shunt’ should also serve to decrease the apparent series resistance of the lithium ion batteries at the device level.  As I recall, lithium ion batteries have (today) a nasty tendency to over heat when charged or dicharged rapidly (as in electric vehicles during accelleration or regenerative braking).  This new development is worth watching as it could enable ‘filling station’ recharge rates, and improve the safety and reliability of Li-ion batteries in hybrid and electric vehicles.  Li-ion batteries also have higher energy density than lead-acid batteries, although both are far from the energy density of liquid hydrocarbons.  Still, this might be a good step towards technology useful for store-gen grid components discussed here occasionally.

5nm thick phosphate glass coatings on lithium iron phosphate particles speed up charge/discharge rates by ~30x.

Of course, the main discussion was about start-ups and the environment where they originate and grow [...]]]> Yesterday, Josh Tabin gathered the Startup Houston contributors to lunch at El Meson; the company and the food were both spicy and excellent (thanks, Josh!). Collectively, and individually, our goal is to help transform Houston into a dynamo of entrepreneurship.

Of course, the main discussion was about start-ups and the environment where they originate and grow – and what we could do to help. As in any conversation about start-ups here, the disappointing fact came up regarding how venture capital is so concentrated on the East and West Coasts (the Bay Area and Boston) and how Houston (and indeed Texas and the other 48 states) is ignorable fly-over country.

I’ve heard comments like that for a long time. And while is certainly true that the preponderance of venture capital and start-ups are both concentrated in those areas, stopping the conversation there, as often happens, isn’t constructive. It makes me think of frustrated bird-watchers looking for some rare scavenger species with a weird diet (e.g. start-ups that can’t live without vitamin VC).

The musing geek part of me is also reminded of Ostwald Ripening (Figure from Wikipedia). This describes process by which a large ensemble of small particles usually ends up as a small collection of large particles. It’s often an important issue in nanotechnology. You can see a very nice simulation of the process here (warning: big animated gif).

Ostwald Ripening Schematic

Here’s the point: is there some social or business process that makes start-ups diffuse to where the VC’s are? Maybe so – I need to ponder that some more. I’m pretty sure that it accounts for the old adage about the rich getting richer. Perhaps it also explains why there is more money in banks than laying on sidewalks, and why trash ends up in landfills (OK, maybe not on those two).

But back to the lunch discussion – of course, we got past the forlorn birdwatcher stage quickly. We all have particular perspectives about important growth factors.

Here’s mine: I think that start-ups come from combining customers with ideas in the presence of an entrepreneur. Now that can be an explosive mixture – fuel, oxidizer and spark. But I’m talking about real customers – live people you meet face to face that have real problems they’ll pay money to resolve. And real ideas – potential solutions that arise from some well informed knowledge about how things work – and how you might be able to make them work better. Of course, you can have a business idea essentially in a vacuum, but if you’re idea serves some faceless ‘market’, you’d better track down a real customer to vet it. And if you have a general idea for a better widget, you’d better find some technical specialist to validate the approach (or learn enough to do it yourself).

The rate limiting step is thus connecting customers with potential solutions. (I know it’s true for me – every time learn about the key problems in an industry, I come away with a year’s worth of ideas). Note that no money of consequence is needed for this. So far, VC’s are irrelevant. I reckon that a big reason Silicon Valley shines for start-ups is because there are a lot of ideas and a lot of customers in a small area. The staff churn out there (yuck!) probably accelerates the process, too. Note that most of the start-ups there involve electronics or software. In my experience, the initial barriers to entry in those fields are generally low and the costs to make or mock up a demo are pretty low, too.

I think that Houston has plenty of customers, and I know that there are lots of well-informed technologists here. So what’s missing? Two things come to mind – Houston is very spread out compared to Boston and the Bay Area, and our major industries, energy and health care, are capital-intensive monoliths. So the flux of entrepreneurial connections is lower, and the barriers to entering the market are fairly high.

The flux issue can be partially addressed by mixer conferences – like the Rice Alliance, BioHouston, Houston Technology Center and Startup Houston events. These are great; we need to grow them and multiply them. And generate some new meetings that are more technology/industry specific. The cost of seeding an idea is a problem if you’re going into energy or biotech, though. My general suggestion is to bootstrap aggressively by using SBIRs and STTRs and connecting with academic laboratories at Rice and the University of Houston. This approach allows you to get to the demo stage while you keep your day job. I’ll write more about that later.

I’d finally observe the obvious – energy is THE hot topic nowadays, and Houston is the world’s energy capital. So we have a big natural advantage and we really should exploit it. I’d note also, that there is an important new trend towards distributed energy – this means small granules of generation and storage at the point of consumption. Thus, some of the monolithic nature of the energy industry is getting deconstructed. This is a MAJOR opportunity for Houston entrepreneurs.

I hope to have a lot more to write about distributed energy in the near future – if you have stories, applications, events, etc. on this, please let me know.