Altair's Developments Pave the Way for a New Generation of Rechargeable Batteries

RENO, NV. – February 10, 2005 – Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALTI) announced today that it has achieved a breakthrough in Lithium Ion battery electrode materials, which will enable a new generation of rechargeable battery to be introduced into the marketplace, as well as create new markets for rechargeable batteries. These new materials allow rechargeable batteries to be manufactured that have three times the power of existing Lithium Ion batteries at the same price and with recharge times measured in a few minutes rather than hours.

Tiny. Cheap. No moving parts. Aerosol cans and UAVs may never be the same.

It sounds implausible, if not impossible: a pump the size of an Altoid that can replace the pressure tanks, seals, valves, fittings, exposed wicks, airflow pathways, and other complex mechanical parts of every small combustion device. Think camp stoves, lanterns - any portable fuel-burning equipment used for cooking, lighting, or heating. And the potential of this remarkable invention, called a capillary pump, goes far beyond redesigned camping gear to small generators, fuel cells, even unmanned aerial vehicles.

Vapore, the company behind the pump, has already sold more than a dozen $5,000 evaluation kits to several national labs, military contractors, and manufacturers. "The other day, I got a call from a Fortune 500 company that sells air fresheners and insecticides," says Vapore CEO Rob Lerner. "They're considering the pump as a way to eliminate disposable aerosol cans."

Photovoltaic cells allow people to stay connected wherever they are.
Bags with their own solar panels will allow people to recharge mobile phones on the run, a conference on sustainable technology has heard.

Mobile phone covers, laptop cases and bags with photovoltaic cells will be available later this year, according to Len McKelvey, director of their Australian supplier, Air Water Australia.

The technology, which has been used by the Israeli military, was on show at last week's Enviro 04 conference.

Hitachi and Japanese ciggie lighter maker Tokai will ship a direct methanol fuel cell system for PDAs in 2005. And they have already built the prototype, the pair said this week.

BERKELEY, CA — Researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with crystal-growing teams at Cornell University and Japan's Ritsumeikan University, have learned that the band gap of the semiconductor indium nitride is not 2 electron volts (2 eV) as previously thought, but instead is a much lower 0.7 eV.
The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current.