Nanophase Technologies Corporation today announced the availability of a new line of high purity zinc oxide nanoparticles primarily targeted for electronic, personal care and other applications requiring UV protection combined with a very high degree of transparency. The new product line provides essentially spherical zinc oxide nanoparticles that are approximately 20nm narrow particle size distributions, while retaining their discrete non-aggregating properties. Nanophase produces three mean product sizes 60, 35 and 20nm. All product lines offer high particle and surface chemical purity and are manufactured to ISO-9001, USP, and cGMP standards.

"We believe that there are a variety of applications for these smaller nanocrystalline materials," stated Dr. Don Freed, Nanophase's vice-president of business development. "It has been demonstrated that different size nanoparticles of the same material may have distinctly different physical properties and behave differently in applications. We intend to expand our product offerings and plan to offer small versions of additional oxide products in the near future".

The new zinc oxide products are available as dry powders or as stable dispersions in a variety of solvents, both aqueous and organic. Surface treatment using Nanophase's patented Discrete Particle Encapsulation (DPE) process and engineered to meet specific customer applications such as transparent coatings designed to protect against ultraviolet and infrared radiation (similar in concept to the Company's already successful sunscreen products, but designed for industrial uses) is also possible.

The zinc oxide products are also suited to electronics applications such as capacitors, varistors, photoprinting and electrophotography due to extremely low levels of heavy metal impurities. Other intermediate particle sizes can also be manufactured due to the inherent flexibility of the PVS process allows the company to manufacture various intermediate particle sizes to meet customer-specific applications.