Harnessing the minuscule to make a big impact
UH professor’s life’s work, which includes 31 issued and pending U.S. patents, has revolved around nanotechnology
Seamus Curran has spent 27 years examining the itty-bitty, using high-powered microscopes to study individual atoms and molecules invisible to the naked eye.
His life’s work, which includes 31 issued and pending U.S. patents, 40 international patents and the founding of a materials company that makes sealers and stains, has revolved around nanotechnology. The technology operates at the tiniest scale, manipulating molecules to build, molecule by molecule, products from sunscreen to computer chips to components of the F-35 fighter jet, all while eliminating defects and weaknesses found in materials manufactured at larger scales.
“Everything that we have at the moment moves better, works better, at the nanoscale,” Curran said.
Curran’s ability to not only gain patents, but also turn them into commercial products and a successful business helped him to become a fellow in the prestigious National Academy of Inventors, a group of renowned academic innovators. Curran, 52, a physics professor at the University of Houston, is among 168 fellows who will be inducted into the academy in April.
More than 1,200 fellows with the National Academy of Inventors hold some 38,000 U.S. patents. These have led to more than 11,000 licensed technologies and companies, created more than 36 million jobs and spurred more than $1.6 trillion in revenues, according to the group.
Curran filed his first nanotechnology patent in 1997 as a lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin. He continued to make scientifically important advances and gain new patents, but many of them sat on the shelf, unused.
That frustrated Curran. So in 2009, he started a company called C-Voltaics, recently renamed Curran Nanotechnologies, to get his inventions out in the world.
“I’m a big believer that if I receive state or federal (research) dollars, there should be a return (to taxpayers),” he said. “If I tell you that I’m going to do this kind of research, go to a conference in a nice hotel, talk about it, disseminate
that information and come home and just go to bed, what’s the value to you that I’ve done that? Obviously, there’s an educational value. There’s a long-term value. But how has that changed your world today or tomorrow?”
Curran and his company focus on coatings that repel water. As he moved to commercialize his work, his first thought was a coating for solar panels that would both repel water and, as the water rushed off the surface, clean the panels so they could capture more sunlight. But getting the coating onto these solar panels would have required drones — convincing Curran to leave that product for later.
Patent issues
He considered clothing and incorporating his coatings into fabrics to repel coffee, wine and other liquids. But he decided the idea wasn’t practical since most clothes are made in foreign countries where patent laws are not respected or enforced.
His next idea, tarps, faced the same problems: overseas manufacturing and few protections for intellectual property.
“They have issues with patents,” he said, “and there’s no dancing around it.”
Curran finally settled on creating sealers and stains for wood, concrete, brick, tile and grout.
The name of his product line, CaraPro, is inspired by the Gaelic word Cara, which means friend. The sealers penetrate the materials and form a protective barrier under the surface.
Curran creates this coating by knitting together silicon and carbon molecules into a specific pattern. He began selling CaraPro four years ago, targeting property management companies, Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) and local governments.
Michael Knight, a commercial property manager for Transwestern, a Houston real estate operating, development and investment management company, said he was skeptical of Curran and his product at first. But a small test site won him over.
He then put CaraPro on some sidewalks and brick buildings, which previously required pressure washing twice a year. Two years later, he still has not needed to clean those areas. Knight manages and maintains the UH Technology Bridge research park and startup hub.
“It’s really cut back on our maintenance,” Knight said.
Jim Sheffield, general manager of the Northampton MUD north of Houston, likes the product’s 15minute drying time. He used a CaraPro stain on wooden decks in parks, and said it dried before kids had an opportunity to step in it and track it around the park.
CaraPro is just the first of the products that Curran hopes to commercialize. He’s seeking a management team to run the dayto-day operations of the company that sells CaraPro, freeing him up to focus on other business ideas, not to mention teaching, writing research papers and filing patents.
Oil and water
One potential product is a fabric that can separate oil from water. The fabric repels water and attracts oil, separating the two in a way that both cleans the water and captures the oil so it can be reused. Curran said the fabric could help clean up oil spills.
He’s also working on a material that could not be penetrated by high-intensity lasers. This would protect cameras in drones, satellites and self-driving cars from being made inoperable by laser beams.
“I’ve never been good to stick with one field. I do lots of different things,” Curran said. “The nice thing with research, it is where my imagination allows me to run.”