OREANDA-NEWS. December 13, 2010. The Supervisory Board of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies has approved RUSNANO’s participation in three new investment projects. The projects have aggregate budgets in excess of seven billion rubles, including co-investment from the corporation of more than three billion rubles.

In accordance with the council’s decision, RUSNANO and company TMK will establish production of precision corrosion-resistant pipes at TMK’s Sinarsky Pipe Plant in Sverdlovsk Oblast. Pipes from the new facility will meet demand from the chemical, oil-and-gas, energy, and mechanical engineering industries. Improved characteristics of the corrosion-resistant pipes, particularly their wear resistance and imperviousness to harsh environments, derive from modifications in the structure of the steel and alloys, modifications made at the nanolevel. Through the use of nanotechnology, cost of pipe production, moreover, declines as fewer alloy additives are needed.

Also winning support from RUSNANO is a project to produce epitaxial polished sapphire substrates for light-emitting diodes and ultrahigh-frequency   nanoheterostructures. Sapphire substrates have become the basis for production of energy-efficient high brightness LED chips and ultrahigh-frequency circuits for mobile communications. The plant for manufacturing two-inch, four-inch, and six-inch sapphire wafers will probably be located in Stavropol Krai.

A project proposed by specialists from the Bochvar All-Russian Scientific Research Institute for Inorganic Materials rounds out the trio of council-approved investments. It will establish commercial production of superstrength nanostructured cable with high electrical conductivity. Niobic nanowire of ten-nanometer thickness in the cable lends particular durability, while the electrical conductivity of the copper-niobic conductor is only slightly below that of pure copper conductors. Output from this project will be used in powerful pulse magnets and magnet pulse inductors—for industrial applications and in contact cables for high-speed rail transport, aviation and space equipment, shipbuilding, electronics, and elsewhere when especially sturdy cable is required.

In addition to approving investment in the three projects, the Supervisory Council approved the structure of the transaction for a project to produce new generation of plastic electronics. As announced earlier, Plastic Logic, world leader in the growing plastic electronics market, will build a manufacturing facility in Russia under the project.

Finally, the Supervisory Council of RUSNANO endorsed results of an open tender to select the corporation’s auditor for 2010. PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit won the competition.