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From sand traps to lines in the sand, Integran Technologies Inc. is finding quite a few uses for nanometals.

The Toronto-based company has found markets for its nanometals in the defence sector, in sporting goods, and in an assortment of commercial applications such as airplane and auto manufacturing.

Integran's origins go back to the old Ontario Hydro Corp., which in the mid-1990s began researching advanced materials for its nuclear reactor program. Hydro researchers began exploring the use of nanotechnology — manipulating materials at tolerances of nanometers, or millionths of millimeters — to create metals with useful properties like greater strength and lighter weight.

The work was spun off into a separate company called Integran in 1999, says Robert Samuel, Integran's manager of business development; Hydro remained majority owner until a management buyout aided by Toronto venture capital firm Mosaic Capital Partners at the end of 2003.

The company is built on two core technologies, both the subject of patents, Mr. Samuel explains. The first is grain boundary engineering, a way of improving the internal structure of metals to make them stronger. Essentially, all metals have a granular structure, and by making the grains smaller you can make the metal stronger without increasing its weight.

The second is a way of plating other materials with nanometals. This is proving valuable because of growing concerns about the electroplating process that has long been used for chrome plating. Integran has come up with an alternative called Nanocrystalline Cobalt-Phosphorus, which provides the same properties as chrome without the environmental and health concerns - the traditional process uses lead and releases a dangerous chrome vapour into the atmosphere, Mr. Samuel says.

Integran's Nanocrystalline Cobalt-Phosphorus plating process won the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance's Xerox Award for Development and Application of Nanotechnology in Canadian Industry for 2006.

The military uses of stronger metals are easy to imagine. Armour plating can be made stronger and lighter. Frank Cotter, Integran's chief operating officer, says his company's nanotechnology can deliver armour plating that is as strong as conventional armoured steel twice its thickness. And, he says, the nanometallic armor is much easier to work with than armoured steel, which is so hard to bend that the usual way of fitting it around awkward shapes is to cut it into pieces and then weld it back together.

Armoured steel can stop a bullet, but to stop armour-piercing projectiles, ceramic materials are preferred. Ceramics are very hard — but they are also, as anyone who has ever dropped a dish knows — brittle. So, Mr. Cotter says, they work well for stopping one projectile, but repeated hits will break through. Integran's solution is to plate the ceramic material with nanometal, which keeps the ceramic from shattering.

Integran has also developed a nanometallic foam — a sort of latticework of metal strands — that can absorb the energy generated by an explosive blast.

These nanomaterials are in the final stages of development now and should be ready for use in the field in 2007, Mr. Cotter says. Integran's main defence customer is the U.S. military — the company has done one small program with Canada's Department of National Defence focusing on nano-plating ceramic armour.

Integran is also using nanotechnology to create "lubricious" metallic coatings that don't need lubrication - highly useful for military technology used in desert climates where sand sticks to grease, Mr. Samuel says.

But nanometals aren't limited to military uses. Gino Palumbo, Integran's president and chief executive, says the company has tried to focus on "the areas where people will pay the most on a per-pound basis for new materials." Defence is high on that list, he says — but so is sport. PowerMetal Technologies a Carlsbad, Calif. company part-owned by Mosaic Venture Partners, has an exclusive license to use Integran's nanometal technologies in consumer products, and is focusing on sporting goods.

Edward Hughes, PowerMetal's president and chief executive, says its materials are already used in a line of tennis, squash and racquetball racquets from Vienna-based Head N.V., and a line of golf clubs with nanometallic shafts is due for launch in the first quarter of 2007. "It's the strength-to-weight ratio that we're looking to get," says Mr. Hughes. There are potential uses in other sports from baseball to soccer to lacrosse, he says. "We have a blue-chip list of sporting goods companies that we're looking at."

Integran has also set up Morph Technologies Inc., a partnership with Huntsville, Ont.-based auto parts manufacturer Algonquin Automotive, to use nanometals in parts and materials for the automotive industry. Mr. Samuel says carmakers are looking for ways to reduce the weight of their vehicles without sacrificing strength, and nanometals - either by themselves or plated on plastics to add strength - are one answer.

Integran has latched on to a market with lots of potential, says Vladimir Krstic, director of the Centre for Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramics and Nanomaterials at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. Hurdles to be overcome include the cost of manufacturing and controlling the properties of the materials, Mr. Krstic says, and Integran's technology shows promise in addressing both issues.

If that can be done, the growth potential is considerable. "Strength of metals is extremely important," says Mr. Krstic, "and everybody would be looking for higher strength and higher hardness."