Posted: June 29, 2009

Bringing a nanotechnology to market: a faculty perspective

(Nanowerk News) Tim Weihs of the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering will be the next guest speaker for the Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT) Professional Development Seminars on July 8, at 11 a.m. in 110 Maryland Hall. Weihs, a professor of materials science and engineering, is co-founder of Reactive NanoTechnologies (RNT), which produces NanoFoil®.
Tim Weihs
Tim Weihs
RNT makes the patented NanoFoil® at its Hunt Valley, Md. facility. This new class of nano-engineered material is fabricated by vapor-depositing thousands of alternating layers of aluminum and nickel. The foil can be activated electrically, optically or via a heat source to deliver localized temperatures up to 1500C in just fractions of a second. The foil can be used for applications requiring rapid and precise bonding, such as attaching an LED to a circuit board.
Tim Weihs received a B.S. from Dartmouth College in 1983, an M.E. from Thayer School of Engineering in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 1990. He worked as a NATO postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Materials at Oxford University, and completed a second postdoctoral study in the Chemistry and Materials Science Department at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1995, he joined the faculty in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Weihs is also an INBT affiliated faculty member.
In 2002, Weihs took a leave of absence from Hopkins to co-found Reactive NanoTechnologies with Omar Knio, a Hopkins professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. After growing the company to the point of first commercial sales, Weihs returned to full-time teaching and research duties but maintains a small role with RNT as its Chief Technical Officer. His awards include a National Science Foundation Career Award, a 3M Young Faculty Fellowship, an R&D 100 Award, and an Innovator of the Year Award.
To attend this talk, please RSVP to Ashanti Edwards at [email protected] by July 7.
Source: Johns Hopkins