Aug 13/03 I mentioned ALTI as a "canary" company in nanotechnology field because materials of greater purity and uniformity of structure are increasingly required for modern high tech processes and products.
Has anybody here followed it?
Latest news releases:
finance.yahoo.com
The stock price has gone nuts the last couple of days:
siliconinvestor.com
I don't know what particular aspect of the company has created such interest.
I'd guess, if it's not just stock promoting behaviour - there's a bit of a nano-stock boom right now - that it's the company's battery or solid oxide fuel cell materials, and processes for making them, which might be the source of interest.
See here:
businesstoinvestor.com
altairnano.com
businesstoinvestor.com
altairnano.com
The rest of the company's application development interests don't seem as highly developed or yet have the potential for serious revenue or buyout possibilites. See here if you're interested in them:
altairnano.com
Solid oxide fuel cells have the advantage of operating at a high enough temperature that they don't have to use pure hydrogen as the fuel and can use gasoline or natural gas, etc instead. The catch of course is reducing cost of manufacture to be competitive with conventional power sources. Altair's technology isn't there yet as far as I know, but would seem to have the potential for mass production of vital fuel cell elements.
The company's lithium battery materials technology seems to be superior to that currently in use.
The DOE standards, noted in the research report, were established by PNGV (Partnership for New Generation of Vehicles) through a cooperative research and development program between the federal government and the United States Council for Automotive Research for PNGV?s power assist program. The DOE has established a goal for battery specific energy storage of 7.5 Wh/kg and specific power delivery at 625W/kg. The prototype battery, a nonaqueous asymmetric hybrid incorporating the advantages of both Li-ion batteries and super capacitors, exhibited the following characteristics: stored energy of 11wh/kg with delivery of 800 W/Kg at 95 percent efficiency. The cycle life ranged between 10,000 and 100,000 cycles depending on cycling conditions. The appropriateness for automotive applications was evidenced by the study of several typical examples. No other battery materials tested by Telecordia met and/or exceeded the PNGV standards.
Altair?s battery materials were supplied to Telecordia by FMC Lithium (NYSE:FMC) under the terms of a development agreement entered into on November 13, 2001 between Altair and FMC. It is expected that nano-lithium titanate spinel-based batteries will be used for power assistance for lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, or metal hydride batteries for use in hybrid automobiles. Other applications will include uninterrupted power supplies, military applications and other specialized uses such as notebook computers, mobile phone and a variety of portable devices.
Anyway, I'm a bit puzzled because development company stock prices are news driven and there doesn't seem to be news to support the price activity of the last few days.
Mind you, I'm not complaining. |
