On the need of a network of nanolaboratories open to the small-medium enterprises

Since two decades, Nanotechnology promises to be the key of a technological revolution that will change significantly every aspect of life.

The impact of nanotechnology on everyday-life has not been so spectacularized as expected: no elevators made of carbon nanotubes to go to the moon, no nanorobots that clean or veins and our organs. However, many nanomaterials silently reached and now occupy the supermarket shelves. As a result, a gap emerged between large companies that have access to nanotechnology and exploit them for their purposes, often secretly since they may create distrust in the public, and small medium enterprises that are not aware of the improvement can nanotechnology may bring to their business. In other words, nanotechnology is a mature technology in some fields, but is still out of reach in other fields and this is often dictated by the size of the production sector, thus affecting mainly SMEs. In this workshop we will try to understand which tools and which strategies have been already developed in Italy to help the demand (SMEs) to meet the offer (Universities and research centers, public or private).

Often SMEs cannot sustain the adoption of expensive nanotechnological tools, such as nano-microscopy and nanofabrication laboratories, while public research centers run that equipment and have the know-how but are stuck in a complex network of regulation, and are difficult to get in touch. Moreover, there is still an issue of standardization so that often the results obtained are laboratory specific. And cannot be used for industrial application such ad certification of quality control. Four scientists from research centers or universities and four representatives of companies will provide examples of successful SME-academia collaboration, compare the approach and the methodology developed, Finally we will discuss on the opportunity of the creation of national network of nanotechnology laboratories opened to SMEs.