Recently, I attended nano tech 2009 (International Nanotechnology Exhibition & Conference). I’m unsure how many years the show has been running; however, I think its history is short, perhaps not more than five years.
This was my first visit to the show.
My primary goal was to check out their newest exhibition added this year called ‘Printable Electronics 2009‘. Printable Electronics 2009 was one of six concurrent exhibitions held at Tokyo Big Sight, Japan. My plan was to only visit this particular exhibition, so I scheduled myself for one half of a day – arriving early in the morning on day one of the show.
I began the tour at one end of the exhibition, and was pleasantly surprised to find many exciting displays while also participating in a few thought-provoking discussions. I was so impressed with the show I ended up staying the full three days the exhibition was scheduled to run.
The floor size was about one-half compared to NEPCON WORLD or JPCA Show , but representatives from companies within the industry, as well as R&D organizations, reserved more than 700 booths.
Additionally, several public R&D organizations that included NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization), AIST (Association for Iron and Steel) and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft showcased more than 200 technical projects.
All told, there were more than 1,000 leading-edge technologies featured with the latest progresses and affiliated products. Nano technology and related products occupied about half of the floor plan.
Convertech JAPAN 2009, neo functional material 2009, Nano Bio Expo 2009, Printable Electronics 2009, ASTEC 2009 (surface treatment technology), and METEC ’09 (surface treatment materials) were concurrently run shows. NEDO reserved a large area, and featured almost 100 successful R&D projects.
A big difference between this exhibition and other industrial shows is exhibitors at nano tech 2009 focus on future technologies instead of tomorrow’s bread and butter.
The products displayed were mostly ordinary industry materials and basic technologies such as coating; surface treatment, printing and photolithography.
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Of course, nanometer-sized materials and processing are the major subjects at the exhibition.
A unique distinction for the show was the noteworthy contributions from foreign countries. Many foreign companies from major industrial countries reserved large booths featuring the latest R&D activities for nano technologies.
The countries represented included Australia; Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iran, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.
The German booths occupied more than one-third of the floor space, while Belgium reserved two larger booths to represent the Northern region (Flanders) and Southern region (Wallonia). I think these countries had two agendas: one involved promoting their high-tech companies to Asian countries, and the second was to invite more high-tech companies from other countries.
Each government’s representative was very aggressive and tried to speak with all of the visitors during the show.
I was surprised at the lack of representation from the United States government – which did not reserve one single booth. However, the state of Illinois took it upon themselves to reserve a relatively small booth.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of competition amongst the different countries and providences of the same country to attract high-tech companies.
Most government officials from countries presented sales pitches to many companies bragging about their state-of-the-art infrastructures; size of their science and high-tech parks, and the business value of their geographic regions.
Many public and private universities also participated in the show. Their university laboratories were provided with the smallest booth sizes; however, they were granted one booth free of charge. The students attending were very spirited explaining the recent results from their R&D projects, hoping to secure patents for commercialization.
I mentioned above the technologies I observed were relatively basic and not practical for business applications in the near future.
However, there were many visitors from industry-related companies at attendance despite the slow economy hanging overhead.
Certainly, these companies are considering the long-term relative to high-tech business (assuming they survive the current financial crisis).
Stay tuned for more details from observations of my visit to nano tech 2009 International Nanotechnology Exhibition & Conference.
Source: EPT Newsletter, March 2009
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