duncan.adams@roanoke.com 981-3324

Even a mossbacked technophobe might confess to a nanosecond's burst of curiosity about a patented product called "Metal Rubber."

You might lose this Luddite, though, by sharing too many details.

Details like this: Metal Rubber is made through an innovative process based on the self-assembly of nanoparticles.

This flexible, "novel material" conducts electricity like metal even when stretched like rubber.

Metal Rubber might someday serve "morphing" aircraft with shape-shifting wings. It might have biomedical applications - perhaps as a component of artificial muscles - or meet other needs not yet identified.

And it might someday push revenues through the roof for a small, private, nanotechnology company in Blacksburg that's grown from two employees in 1998 to 43 and has no outside investors.

The folks at NanoSonic Inc., who shy away from discussions about annual revenues but say the company has "always been profitable," have begun shopping Metal Rubber to Fortune 500 companies.

"Eight people from a Fortune 500 company were in here a couple of weeks ago," said Jennifer Hoyt Lalli, nanocomposites group leader for NanoSonic, during an interview Tuesday at the company's increasingly cramped quarters on South Main Street.

"Right now we are still refining Metal Rubber to the specs these companies want," she said.

The prefix "nano," which comes from the Greek word for "dwarf," refers to really small stuff. Stuff invisible to the naked eye. Nano is equal to one billionth of something, so a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 60,000 to 100,000 nanometers wide.

Researchers at NanoSonic work at the "nano" scale. They come up with products such as Metal Rubber by manipulating molecules. A molecule is the smallest unit of a substance that retains that substance's properties.

Here's how NanoSonic's process of electrostatic self-assembly works. First, researchers treat a base material, such as glass, so that it retains a specific electrical charge. Then, they repeatedly dip the base material into baths with ions of alternating positive and negative charges. The oppositely charged nanoparticles, which NanoSonic makes in house, attract and stick to one another, like Velcro. Each dip builds up layers, creating a new material.

NanoSonic was founded in 1998 by Virginia Tech professor Rick Claus and Yanjing Liu, then a graduate student who had been researching coatings and films in Tech's chemistry department. Claus remains company president; Liu left NanoSonic in 2001.

NanoSonic has exclusively licensed from Virginia Tech nine patents covering electrostatic self-assembly processing.

Claus, whose last name is pronounced like Santa's, was traveling this week and could not be reached for comment.

But Lalli said word about Metal Rubber is spreading.

"We get calls about it every week," she said.

Marten de Vries, NanoSonic's vice president of business development, said company revenue sources include government research and development funds and "prototyping funding" from defense contractors. The company also has a portfolio of products that incorporate NanoSonic's electrostatic self-assembly process, he said.

Lalli said NanoSonic is "bursting at the seams" on South Main Street, and she and de Vries acknowledged that a search is under way for a new home.

De Vries put it this way in an e-mail: "NanoSonic is looking for a cost effective expansion solution and would like to stay in the area."

Lalli would not say whether Metal Rubber contains any metal or rubber. She said she preferred to talk in terms of nanoparticles and polymers.