Henne van Heeren, CEO, enablingMNT, MANCEF Advisory Board
Dr. Steven Walsh, Regents Professor UNM, MANCEF Board Member
Iran’s small technology community is moving forward both scientifically and commercially. The human capital fuelling the Iranian government push toward excellences in specific scientific areas is the 4.1 million students at the universities. The government is especially interested in small tech (micro and nano) where they have greatly improved their funding scholarly output, patent production and company generation in the last decade. Some see the embargo of Iran to be something of a blessing in disguise, forcing Iran to develop rapidly all kind of technologies and test it out and create firms in a shielded environment.
Among the recently launched projects are: production of enhanced power plants' filters with nano fibre technology, nano silica powder with applications in rubber and paint industries, antibacterial polyamide yarns and pilot-production of nano membrane filtration. These products are used to purify polluted water. Most of these products were stated to be produced using micro based manufacturing technologies. Iran has increased their scholarly outputs in ranked technological journals in MEMS and among the recently launched projects are: production of enhanced power plants filters with nano fibre technology, nano silica powder with applications in rubber and paint industries, antibacterial polyamide yarns and pilot-production of nano membrane filtration. These products are used to purify polluted water. Most of these products are being produced using micro based manufacturing technologies.
Iran has made wide strides in nano technology in recent years. Iran stood 12th in the 2011 world ranking of nano technology scientific production with a total number of 2,998 journal publications. In one decade the number of nano technology papers increased from eight per year to eight per day. They are improving. Not surprisingly Iran has risen on most of the Nanotechnology ranking lists. Today the Iranian government or Iranian firms file about 20 international nano technology patents a year, and many more in the Iran patent effort. Iran’s effort in MEMS, micro systems or micro machining is smaller with 421 related journal articles developed from 2004 through 2013. However we see the same growth with Iran only producing eight papers in 2004 jumping to 81 efforts in 2012 or a ten-fold increase.
Iran, like many other smaller countries, is not willing to be on the outside of the small tech economic development race. Today their application efforts seem unfettered but they need to focus. Traditionally countries focus on where their research has acquired acclaim and where their emerging firms are focused. Here we focus on the areas that Iran as excelled in MEMS research and focus on firm development for Iranian nanotechnology interests.
Iran has produced a number of academic articles on MEMS but relatively few in the last two years have a significant citation rate. The 6 title of the highest cited papers (At least 8 citation and none with more than 20) in MEMS for the last two years from the newest to the oldest include:
1) On the mechanical behavior of a functionally graded micro beam subjected to a thermal moment and nonlinear electrostatic pressure
2) A novel bandwidth enhancement technique for X-band RF MEMS actuated reconfigurable reflect array
3) Chaos prediction and control in MEMS resonators
4) Static pull-in analysis of electrostatically actuated micro beams using homotopy perturbation method
5) Effects of viscous heating, fluid property variation, velocity slip, and temperature jump on convection through parallel plate and circular micro channels
6) Dynamic pull-in instability of electrostatically actuated beams incorporating Casimir and van der Waals forces
Most of these authors work provide value in MEMS processes or component manufacturing. The one paper focused on a specific application is X-band RFMEM.
Nano technology in Iran is best characterised by firm activity. Here many feel that the embargo has shielded these companies from foreign companies. Iran has created a series of nano and micro equipment suppliers. These include: Nano Systems Pars Co. which builds scanning probe microscopy instruments; Toseye Hesgarsazan Asia Co. manufacturing LPCVD, DRIE and PECVD manufacturing equipment; Nana structured Coating Co. manufacturing thin film coating systems and many others. Some like FNP are startups which have come to being in a manner familiar to many.
FNP is an electro-spinning firm. They produce machines that can produce among other things filters. They have sold two of their systems to industry. Their CEO is Reze Faridi. It is approximately a 20-person firm. It was initiated based on research in 2004 as a university effort. In 2007 they spun out of university and now are associated with the Imam Khomeini hospital. We provide an example of the instrumentation being developed for Micro and Nano applications here in figure 1. It is Parto Negar Persia Co. equipment for animal spectroscopy.
Authors:
Henne van Heeren is a founding member of MACEF and one of the founders of enablingMNT. He participated in a NATO lecture series on nano technology twice and he has published over 60 articles and reviews about the development and industrialization of MEMS/MST products. He has been a chapter author for the MANCEF Micro and Nanotechnology series of Roadmaps. Henne van Heeren studied chemistry in Utrecht and worked as a material scientist at the University of Delft. Hereafter, he worked for 17 years within Philips as production manager and business development manager being responsible for industrialization and commercialization of different products and services in the micro technology industry.
Dr. Steven Walsh is the Regents professor at UNM’s Anderson School of Management. He is also the institute professor for entrepreneurial renewal at the University of Twente. He has many business service awards including the lifetime achievement award for commercialization of Micro and Nano technology firms from MANCEF. He has also been named as a Tech All Star from the State of New Mexico Economic Development Department and has been recognized by Albuquerque the magazine as a leader in service to the economic community. Finally, he is exceptionally proud of the Anderson School of Management service to the community award.