NanoSight

About NanoSight

NanoSight was founded in 2002 by John Knowles and its current Chief Technical Officer, Bob Carr, to develop nanoparticle detection techniques based on a suite of patents that came out of their work. It is now the world leading provider of a series of unique instruments for the optical detection and real time analysis of sub-micron particles that offer significant advantages compared to existing light scattering techniques.

The Company's proprietary knowledge and expertise has enabled the delivery of technologies to blue chip companies and universities for direct visualisation of individual nanoscale particles in suspension from which immediate   independent quantitative estimation of particle size, size distribution and concentration can be obtained.

A major international defence contractor, Smiths Industries, was an early licensee, applying NanoSight's technology in virus detection and, in 2005, NanoSight was awarded a prestigious UK Government Nanotechnology Research Grant. NanoSight is one of several metrology solutions currently under serious scrutiny with the National Physical Laboratory as a potential next-generation characterisation standard.

Since instrument deliveries commenced in 2006, NanoSight now has more than 200 systems in service worldwide. The revolutionary NanoSight LM10 and LM20 systems are powered by the ground-breaking Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA) software, which has been the subject of a recent major upgrade. The growing base of users includes Roche, Unilever, Oxonica, BASF, Nestle, ICI, AWE and Epson together with a host of university nanoparticle research departments. UK University users include Birmingham, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Southampton and Surrey.

NanoSight has been continuously expanding and since late 2008 has relocated its Headquarters to larger premises and significantly increased the headcount. New offices have been opened on the West and East coasts of the USA and the distributor network worldwide has grown to support the accelerating sales growth. Further details may be found on Distributors page.

NanoSight Ltd is a venture capital backed company. Original funds from NESTA, Strathdon Investments and South West Ventures have recently been augmented by significant angel investment from members of the SWAIN and OEI Investment Networks.