Ionova Technologies gets $75,000 TEDCO grant

Fraser Seymour, Ionova's president and chief executive officer, said he wants to be a part of providing mobile energy storage for the "unplugged generation."
Photo by Travis Pratt

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/business/display.htm?StoryID=80573
Originally published September 24, 2008
By Ike Wilson News-Post Staff
Ionova Technologies Inc., one of seven Maryland startups to receive a portion of $525,000 in grant funding from the Maryland Technology Development Corp., wants to capitalize on the need for high-capacity electric power on the go.
Ionova, located on Thomas Johnson Drive in Frederick, is working with Naval Research Lab to further develop its 3-D nanofilm energy storage technology for use in next generation ultracapacitors and lithium ion batteries.

The company's $75,000 grant -- designed to foster greater collaboration between businesses and Maryland universities and federal laboratories in order to bring technology into the marketplace -- will be used to support some of its work with the Naval Research Lab.

"We are increasingly a generation unplugged," said Fraser Seymour, Ionova's president and chief executive officer. "Hybrid/electric vehicles are unplugged from the gas pump. Wireless phones are unplugged from the office. Portable computers are unplugged from the desk. Cordless power tools are unplugged from the wall."

Unfortunately, the battery and supercapacitor technologies enabling this freedom have not kept pace, Seymour said.

Ionova Technologies is working to change this by creating energy storage devices with improved energy density, charge and discharge rates, cycle life, safety and cost based on its revolutionary 3-D nanofilm materials, Seymour said.

"In other words, we want to provide energy innovation for the unplugged generation," Seymour said. "While a lot of people are interested in energy conversion, such as using solar and windmill, of particular interest to me is storing energy for mobile applications."

Two device types involved in mobile energy storage are rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors. Ionova's technology can significantly improve each of these, which makes it unique and exciting, said Seymour, a 20-year Middletown resident.

"I want to do something important in this realm of energy storage," Seymour said. "I want to be one of the people who helped make it happen."

Ionova was created in late 2006 to commercialize this technology, starting with nanomaterials research that Seymour and the Naval Research Lab were conducting independently.

"It had become clear to me no matter what energy solution takes hold, electrical energy storage would be at the center of it," Seymour said.

There is certainly a very large market for mobile energy storage, including cars and computer companies, he said.

"If you do your science right, if you do your homework right, the money will come," Seymour said.

Ionova is the second technology company Seymour has built. The first, also here in Frederick, was Woodwind Communications Systems in the 1990s, which developed and supplied network and telecommunications products.

The company raised $17 million in institutional venture capital and was acquired for a mostly-stock deal with a peak, pre-dot-com crash value of more than $100 million, Seymour said.

Companies that also received grants are located in Silver Spring, Baltimore, Germantown and Elkton with technologies ranging from Internet TV and movie watching to vaccines for staph.

[続きを読む]