image: A single layer of silicon nanospheres is sufficient to coat surfaces with bright colors that don’t fade and have little environmental impact. With JST funding, Kobe University material engineer SUGIMOTO Hiroshi is now developing his research achievement into a product to benefit the cosmetics and security ink markets and is preparing to expand into the mobility paint market.
Credit: SUGIMOTO Hiroshi
To commercialize a completely new way of creating colors, a coalition between Kobe University and the venture capital firm ANRI received startup development funding of ¥300 million from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). With their lightweight, unfading and environmentally friendly way of producing color, they want to first enter the security ink and cosmetics markets before moving om to paints for cars, airplanes and other mobility applications.
We color our world, and ourselves, to display information, to protect the underlying surface, to uniquely identify an object, and for many more reasons. But there are many problems, too. For one, conventional colors degrade over time, making frequent reapplication necessary. Also, some of the pigments themselves and their solvents, as well as the energy necessary to dry away the solvent, have a range of environmental or health impacts. And many colors are not very opaque in their intended setting, so they need foundations or must be applied thickly, adding weight and further increasing the environmental impact.
The Kobe University material engineer SUGIMOTO Hiroshi has developed a completely new way of producing colors. “Using tiny silicon spheres of very consistent size, light can be scattered around these spheres so that only one color is reflected,” he says. He demonstrated that just a single layer applied to a glass surface produces bright and brilliant colors. And since they are not produced by light absorption, as in conventional pigments, but by scattering around a nanometer-sized, spherical silicon crystal, the colors also should neither fade nor depend on the viewing angle. (Read more on this in our press release: “Structural color ink: Printable, non-iridescent and lightweight”) Sugimoto says: “Then, we realized that this material lets us coat 3D objects in non-iridescent colors.”
Teaming up with KAMEDA Takahiro from the venture capital firm ANRI, which is specialized on developing deep tech startups, Sugimoto went on to identify the needs of different paint-related markets and how his development could help them solve problems facing companies in these markets. Supported by Kobe University Capital, which links research results generated by Kobe University to social implementation, the consortium around Sugimoto now successfully applied for the Japan Science and Technology’s D-Global program for a startup development fund of ¥300 million.
In a first step, they will aim to produce high value-added products that can only be created with this technology, such as security inks and raw materials for cosmetics. “With our nanospheres we can theoretically achieve printing resolutions of up to 50,000 dpi (your office printer has a resolution of 300 dpi) which is well beyond the 10,000 dpi required for the most advanced security inks. For the cosmetics industry, they are the only raw product that can combine the functions of pigments and concealers in foundations and sunscreens. Also, silicon being the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, humans are taking it in daily without any health effects,” explains Sugimoto. A first plant for this purpose is planned to be constructed and start production in 2027.
After having established production technologies and sales networks, they want to expand to the mobility industry with a second plant planned for 2029. Sugimoto says: “Between a quarter and a third of the greenhouse gas emissions during the production of a car stem from the coloring process, because it takes so much energy to dry the thick layers of paint. Likewise, for airplane manufacturers, the thick layer of paint adds several hundreds of kilograms to the plane’s weight, which increases its fuel consumption. In both cases, due to their opacity, our nanospheres would require a much thinner layer and so we can significantly reduce costs and environmental impact.”
There is one more advantage to the nanospheres being made of silicon. “In addition to its low environmental impact, silicon is a fundamental material for the semiconductor industry, and therefore has a high affinity with industrial technology in addition to there already being abundant physical and chemical knowledge,” says Sugimoto. And if the material can be sourced from waste products of the semiconductor industry it will further benefit the environment over the whole value chain.
They aim for an initial public offering until 2033 by which time they hope to achieve market shares of up to 20% in some of their markets. Sugimoto says, “I’m excited that with this fund, we have the opportunity to change the paint market and not only create unique value to businesses and consumers, but also do so because it is the environmentally reasonable thing to do.”
This project is funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JPMJSF2405). It is conducted in collaboration with Kobe University Capital and ANRI Inc.
Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Higher Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.