Canatu - Nanotechnology based electronic component

company

How Canatu was created is an amazing story. Co-founder and CEO, David Brown, was born in the USA in a multicultural family. With a Masters in Aerospace Engineering and a PhD in Environmental Engineering and skills in fluid dynamics, aerosol dynamics and chemistry modelling, just to mention a few, David Brown began doing scientific consulting to companies and laboratories around the world. That is also how he got invited by Professor Esko Kauppinen to give a series of lectures on modelling to his group in Finland. This in turn led to a consulting contract working on modelling of aerosol particle formation, control and engineering and, eventually, to joining the TKK as a senior researcher.

Canatu was founded based on a new way to produce carbon nanotubes that was invented thanks to the experience in aerosol catalyst particle engineering. David Brown recalls that the founding moment was driven by the fact that they needed to submit the patent on the new process before giving a conference presentation on the subject. At that point they decided to have a new company hold the patent instead of having it in the inventors' names individually. The name Canatu comes from CArbonNAnoTUbe.

Canatu patterned film.

Canatu has competitive advantage in the CNT material and its performance and also in the process to deposit and make devices from the material. In every application the performance advantages are different, but focusing on the first target market, ITO replacement in touch sensors, haptic interfaces, displays and solar cells, Canatu produces according to David Brown a more flexible, more chemically, mechanically and thermally robust film with better optical properties and at a lower cost. He believes Canatu enables a new generation of flexible electronics because of these properties. Since the production process is roll-2-roll compatible, it enables low cost, high volume printable electronics. "In other markets, other properties of the material are advantageous, for instance, high surface area for electrodes in super capacitors, batteries and fuel cells, chemical functionalizability for solar cells and sensors, high thermal conductivity for heat sinks and thermo acoustic speakers etc etc." David Brown continues.

Canatu was selected as One of the Winners for the Red Herring 100 Europe 2009. Furthermore Canatu has received the White Bull Award, Innovate!2010 Award, and the TechTour30 Award.

Canatu is both a technology push and market pull. The company markets itself to customers as a way to help them make their existing products better in the short term and provide them with the technology to produce new kinds of products in the medium and long term.

Last September Canatu got a 4.7 M€ investment package from Inventure Ltd., Infosto Ltd. and Tekes to fund its production development. According to David Brown the key to get this investment was hard work by a dedicated and diverse team defining and promoting the vision of the company, building up a range of technical abilities, demonstrating that the basic technologies are being successfully commercialized and providing a credible prediction of the path to high returns on investment. Also a range of potential customers willing to vouch for Canatu's abilities and usefulness to their businesses was a crucial part in this. Canatu has now 11 employees and is currently hiring more. A total of approximately 7 M€ has been invested to date.

In 2015, David Brown expects Canatu to be a dominant player in their first market segment (ITO replacement) with greater than 100 M€ in component sales and to be entering their first follow-on markets for more complex printed electronic components such as display backplanes, sensor arrays and solar cell active layers.

To get more potential growth companies in Finland in material related sciences and technologies David Brown has his own opinion. He thinks Finland is in many ways an ideal place to foster start-ups as he here are plenty of qualified technical people, there is a strong research infrastructure, here is generous government support and here are world class businesses to piggy-back on. But the reason more growth companies are not formed is really a question of attitude according to David Brown. "Finns are not risk takers and risk taking is not rewarded in Finland. In Finland, an unsuccessful entrepreneur is considered a failure who cannot be trusted or should not be rewarded while a successful one is considered undeserving and should not be trusted or rewarded. Why take risk when a single failure is never forgiven or when the gains of your hard work are taxed away? Finns must learn to embrace both success and failure to breed a culture where entrepreneurship can flourish. Nevertheless, I believe Finland is changing in this regard and maybe the next generation will feel differently".

Canatu has many projects which could use Aalto University support and Canatu would be happy to pursue them. The only thing holding Canatu back is the excessive cost of university projects. With overhead rates of over 300% mean it is more cost effective for Canatu to hire people internally and buy or rent the necessary equipment than to subcontract research to the university. Aalto University has, effectively, priced itself out of the market. A lower overhead rate would do wonders for increasing our level of cooperation is David Brown's message. - Maybe something for the Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship to consider?

Runar Törnqvist

More information
David P. Brown, CEO
david.brown (at) canatu.com
Tel. +358 50 344 4204
www.canatu.com