Prof Alan Ryder. Image: NUI Galway
NUI Galway’s Nanoscale Biophotonics Laboratory is leading a €5m EU-funded project to develop technology to analyse industrially relevant nanoparticles.
A researcher at NUI Galway’s Nanoscale Biophotonics Laboratory (NBL) will lead a major new €5m project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
The project aims to develop and deploy new process analytical technologies (PAT) for the online measurement and analysis of industrially relevant nanoparticles. The PAT4Nano project is receiving funding under the research and innovation actions strand of Horizon 2020.
PAT4Nano begins this month and will be coordinated by NUI Galway’s Prof Alan Ryder, with five industrial partners from Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, and three research partners from Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany.
Nanomaterial manufacturing
NUI Galway said that nanosuspensions are a critical material type found in everything from pharmaceuticals to inks, paints and fine chemicals used in advanced manufacturing. The accurate measurement of nanosuspensions and the size of nanoparticles is critical for efficient manufacturing processes and, ultimately, the performance of the materials.
The PAT4Nano project aims to develop tools to enable the continuous, rapid and reliable measurement of nanoparticles to facilitate more efficient, less costly, and accurate manufacturing of nanomaterials.
The project consortium’s end-user partners are working on diverse applications in pharmaceuticals, inks and pigments, and materials for catalysis, batteries and glass manufacturing. In pharmaceuticals, the size and characteristics of nanoparticles can be used to produce more effective therapies, highlighting the important role that nanoparticles play.
The end users will work closely with the PAT4Nano team to help produce the best solutions that can be deployed in a manufacturing environment.
Ryder, who leads the NBL at the School of Chemistry in NUI Galway, said: “PAT4Nano is an exemplary, interdisciplinary, industry-academic partnership which aims to solve challenging issues with the online, rapid measurement of nanoparticles, which affects the manufacture of a wide range of advanced materials.”
