SwissLitho has won the start-up contest at Micro and Nano Engineering 2014

MNE is a major annual international conference, devoted to micro and nano engineering, held in a European country every September. The conference brings together engineers and scientists from across the world to discuss recent progress and future trends in the fabrication, manufacturing, operation and application of micro and nano-structures and devices. This year 850 participants gathered in Lausanne.

For the first time the conference included a start-up competition. The aim is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the fields covered by the MNE conference. The finalists had the opportunity to present their start-ups to a large audience during the conference, and discussed their technologies and products with other experts in the field and with potential customers.  

Nine finalists had been selected. Six of them were from Switzerland:

SwissLitho was awarded the first prize. SwissLitho is a young high-tech company with the vision to change the way nanostructures are commonly made.
The company is a tool manufacturer with the patented NanoFrazor being the main product. The NanoFrazor explore is a unique tool for rapid-prototyping of nanostructures and nanodevices. It has been developed for researchers, who want to have easy and quick access to high-resolution nanometer sized geometries of almost  arbitrary kind. Even 3D nanopatterns can be fabricated in a single step and with unmatched precision. The NanoFrazor industrial will be the big brother of the NanoFrazor explore with the purpose to meet industrial requirements for nanopatterning such as accessing large area wafers.

SwissLitho has not only won the first prize at the competition. According to the SwissLitho website the team demonstrated the NanoFrazer explore and more than 120 people took the opportunity to experience their hand drawings turn into nanostructures in real time.