CLEVELAND--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 20, 2004--The US market for nanotech tools is projected to increase nearly 30 percent per year through 2008 to $900 million, and then triple again to $2.7 billion in 2013. Nanotech tools represent a key segment of the emerging nanotechnology business, allowing for the visualization, measurement, manipulation, fabrication, production, simulation and testing of matter in the nanoscale range -- approximately 0.1-100 nanometers. Such tools are indispensable to the large-scale commercial realization of nanotechnology materials, devices and other products. As the focus of the nanotechnology business increasingly shifts away from basic research and toward the development of practical, commercially viable products, the demand for associated tools will be urgent. These and other trends are presented in Nanotech Tools, a new study from
The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based market research firm.

Historically, visualization tools -- and scanning probe microscopes in particular -- have accounted for a sizeable majority of the aggregate nanotech tools market, a function of a spate of technological innovations greatly raising the utility of these devices in recent years. In the future, measurement, fabrication/production and simulation/modeling tools are expected to register faster growth, reflecting both upgrades in the capabilities of these types of tools, and the increasingly sophisticated requirements of nanotechnology product manufacturers.

As markets for nanotechnology products steadily develop, demand for nanotech tools will shift away from basic research and toward applied research and product development activity in a number of sectors. Industries and sectors such as electronics -- especially semiconductor fabrication -- and the life sciences -- pharmaceuticals, medical devices, biotechnology, etc. -- hold particularly good prospects over the relatively short term (roughly five to ten years out). Other potentially large-scale markets -- in the industrial, aerospace/defense, motor vehicles, construction, energy generation and other sectors -- are expected to develop over a somewhat longer term horizon.

Somewhat fewer than 100 private sector firms were believed to be active in the nanotech tools business in the US as of the early years of the new millennium. As would be expected, the nanotech tools industry is in the formative stages, featuring a large number of small, research-oriented start-up-type companies, as well as various large corporate entities.

Contacts
The Freedonia Group, Inc.
Corinne Gangloff, 440-684-9600
pr@freedoniagroup.com