Toray　Launches Its Proprietary Technology Brand - NANOALLOY®

Toray Industries, Inc.

　Toray Industries, Inc. (headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as “Toray”) today announced that it has newly established a brand logo mark for NANOALLOY®, its proprietary innovative microstructure control technology, and intends to actively promote it as a technology brand*1. Specifically, Toray will feature the NANOALLOY® brand logo mark in various advertisements, allow manufacturers to display the logo mark on products using NANOALLOY® technology, and disseminate information regarding the brand on websites to establish the brand not only among Toray’s customer companies but also widely in the industry and among general consumers.

　NANOALLOY® is a coined word that combines the word nano, which is a prefix representing one in a billion, with the word alloy, which refers to a mixture of metallic elements. NANOALLOY® technology is a special technology that combines multiple polymers such as resin components, on a nano-metric scale (one billionth of a meter) to make the alloy. The technology is being used in numerous products and Toray expects to expand its use in wide-ranging areas.
　 Conventional alloys of micron order (one millionth of a meter) were unable to sufficiently reflect the unique characteristics of the respective polymers, and this had been an issue. Toray’s proprietary NANOALLOY® technology enables high performance and functionality in polymers by addressing the issue, and is a revolutionary technology whose basic patent, core process patents and utility patents are owned by Toray. For example, the technology gives carbon fiber composite materials both strength and flexibility, while it enables nylon resins to change shape like rubber and absorb the shock when rapid and strong external force is applied.

　Toray, the pioneer of NANOALLOY® technology, succeeded in its development in 2001 and registered it as a trademark in 2007. While it has gained a certain level of name recognition as Toray’s technology, the company’s aim now is to leverage the newly designed brand logo mark to establish it as a technology brand, which guarantees high quality and high value of the end products, by highlighting the use of Toray’s advanced material and technology.

　　Ever since its inception, Toray has been growing along with its core technologies of synthetic organic chemistry, molecular chemistry and biotechnology. In recent years, it has added nanotechnology to its core technologies and has been pursuing business expansion in growing markets. Moving forward, Toray will accelerate its efforts to disseminate NANOALLOY® as a technology brand that symbolizes Toray’s high technological ability and offer innovative advanced materials and solutions.

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*1:Technology brand denotes a brand that serves as a business source indirectly contributing to a company’s operating revenue by visualizing patent-protected technologies with the brand to improve corporate image of having high technological ability and by differentiating products using such technology.
＜Definition of NANOALLOY® technology＞
A technology that forms polymer alloy structure that combines multiple polymers in the nano-metric scale.
Polymer alloy structure includes
① a structure that minutely disperses multiple polymers on a nano-metric scale
② a structure that enables formation of a continuous 3-D structure that precisely aligns the polymers in a nano-metric scale by suppressing the self-organization effect where they combine on their own upon mixing polymers, and
③ a structure that includes nano-metric particles of several tens of nanometer sized nanomicelle that have the properties of the respective materials.

Toray owns more than 100 NANOALLOY® technology-related patents including basic patent, core process patents and utility patents.