 All right, so we're here at the ID Tech Act show, here with Dex Matt. Hi, so who are you? Hello, I'm Colin with Dex Matt. So what do you do? We produce conductive materials out of carbon nanotubes. We basically adapted polymer processing using carbon nanotubes as the polymers so that we can make continuous threads or continuous thin films that are electrically conductive and also lightweight, flexible, high tensile strength and durable. So right here you're showing... Yeah, we just have a looping video and this is showing a couple of different things. This beginning of the video is showing part of the process of producing the filaments. So this is off-camera, this is a solution which we're extruding through a nozzle of many small holes to create solid filaments of carbon nanotubes. Just carbon nanotubes, there's no filler or epoxy. It's just a solid thread of aligned nanotubes. And then we can take those individual filaments and twist them together or braid them together into thicker cable. So that we can make yarn that's anywhere from a single filament of around 20 micrometers in diameter up to a thick braid of a millimeter in diameter or more. So is this special? Nobody else is doing this? There are a couple of other companies making carbon nanotube thread. We're the only one doing it, I believe, with this liquid-based, fluid-based process. Right here in the video you were showing that this is kind of like your machine? Yeah, exactly. So a moment ago you saw the threads being extruded from the liquid phase. This is now after they've solidified and this is just winding from the collection drum onto a smaller spool. This is a picture of the machine that we used to process it into a thicker room. We're twisting together many filaments into, as you see, a thicker yarn that we're winding up on. So you have some different nibbles right here? So you have that one? What's the other one? Yeah, so this is about 50 filaments twisted into a yarn. This is the braid you just saw in the video being assembled into this thick braid. So is it strong? Yeah, it's quite strong. It's a little bit stronger than steel, much stronger than copper. And so the applications, we think it's going to be very useful for multifunctional applications if you need conductivity but also mechanical strength or durability or lightweight. Then it'll be a useful replacement for metals in applications where you really need more than one of those properties. So is this how we're going to be making the space elevator? Hopefully. This is not quite strong enough yet. But if we continue to improve the properties that we're getting, that would be a fantastic use for it. It was one of the stories, right? They wanted to use carbon? Yeah, this is the material that people always talk about to make a space elevator. You need a certain amount of strength to make that. So carbon nanotubes on an individual molecule level are extremely strong, strong enough to do that. There's a great challenge in making a material that's this large, a macroscopic material that has properties that are similar to those of the single molecules. And so the challenge is to arrange them, put them together into the material in such a way that they reinforce each other that you can get, even if you can get a significant fraction of the single molecule properties, you already have a pretty useful material. That's how you make ropes, right, when you do a rope? Sure, yeah. There's a whole bunch of filaments that are put together in some kind of structure. Exactly, yeah, into a larger and larger structure. So you just do a rope of this? Exactly. You're done. Yeah, more or less. We can go to Space for Chief. That's one of the applications. So this is a similar material, but here we've just made it into the form of a strip so that it's a standalone film. And you can see, I don't mean to block the lens like that, but this is standalone film. It's also very flexible. It's quite thin. It's around 20 micrometers in thickness. But it's also literally conductive and extremely flexible. Durable? Yeah, quite durable as well. Is it not going to rip? Nope. It has alignment to it, so if I tore it down along the direction of alignment like this, it would tear like string cheese. But if I try to tear it across the direction of alignment, it's quite tough. They're basically good luck. It's not going to happen. Yeah. Right? Right. Something like that. So it's very flexible. It's got very good fatigue life and also very good tensile strength. So what would be the application for those? One of the main applications that we're excited about for this is actually in shielding for electromagnetic shielding for data cables, for coaxial cables, particularly in aerospace applications, or really any application where weight is important. It is much lighter than copper conductors. And so in applications where weight savings are extremely critical, in aerospace, if you make an airplane or a satellite lighter, you save on fuel. And that's quite a significant cost savings. And so that's one of the primary applications we're interested in, especially for this film. So you're talking about space? Yeah. And we can do that with the thread as well. This, for example, is a coaxial cable in which we've replaced the copper braid that formed the shielding layer with a carbon nanotube braid. You can also replace that with our carbon nanotube film that you just saw. Another application that we're interested in for this thread, because it's thin, it's durable, you can use it in sewing. You could stitch this into a fabric. And it's flexible enough and durable enough to be part of an article of clothing or other wearable electronic device. And then it's conductive? It is electrically conductive, exactly. So that means you can use it to send data around? Yeah, send data or send power. It's not quite as conductive as copper, but it's much more durable. And so if you need that durability or if you need flexibility, it's a very useful alternative to metal. Machine washable? Yes. And unbreakable? Not unbreakable, but pretty tough, stronger than steel in terms of tensile strength. Are you doing like, because when the US has a bulletproof vest or nothing to do with it? So I think for bulletproof vests, you'd bear off sticking with Kevlar. This is not quite as strong as Kevlar, and you don't need a bulletproof vest to be electrically conductive. But if you do, if in fact you want to incorporate electronics or some other devices into bulletproof vests, then you could incorporate this into a Kevlar vest as a conductive element. You wouldn't make the entire vest out of it. It'd be more expensive and you don't need it to be electrically conductive. And this is what you were talking about? Yeah. So this is a spool of the thread or a close-up of the braided thread that's been combined into a thicker cable or a close-up of tape. We have a website at our online store, dexmatt.com, if you'd like to... So people can go and buy stuff? People can go and buy stuff and then look at one of the properties. They can buy any of these properties, any of these products here. Yeah, the tape in several different widths. You have customers already? They can buy the yarn. Yeah, we don't have any, it's not really being used in any final products, but we have a few, we're basically selling to people who are making prototypes and are interested in trying it out for their applications and we're hoping that some of those will... Somebody's playing badminton with it. Does that mean the badminton racket can send signal about where you hit the ball? We didn't construct it in such a way as to do that, but yes, this is a badminton racket that is strong with our carbon energy. Does that make you have the best badminton racket in the market? What do you think of it? I think probably yes. We do. It's definitely the most expensive badminton racket on the market. The most expensive. So it's not cheap technology what you have? No, it's not. But it enables potentially embedding sensors and electronics directly into your strings. So you may be able to get information that you would not normally be able to get from a typical non-conductive type of string. And a typical material that's conductive would not survive the stresses about hitting this birdie multiple times, whereas the nanotube material can... It's abrasion resistant and it's much stronger than a typical metal wire. So on your store and... So hi, so who are you? My name is Dimitri. I'm the COO of Dexmat. And I'm here with Colin to show off our materials and try to get some... So on your store, how much is one of these? So this material right now is $100 per meter. Per meter, yeah. So as we said, expensive. Because the machine seemed to be going really fast. That's like $100 every second. But so a lot of that cost is basically the labor of us doing the synthesis and then also running the machines. So we aren't really producing at large scale yet. We're producing, let's say, hundreds of meters of this per month, but not anymore than that. So at a larger scale, that price will go down. What do you need to do to go large? What's next? We need to find customers that are ready to develop this into a product that is actually going to be sold to either consumer market or used in a final system. For example, in aerospace or in an e-tech style application that's going to be produced in large quantities. And then at that point, we'd be ready to scale up our process. And we think that this material, the $100 a meter material, we are able to produce it at under a dollar a meter if we scale up. If we were producing a lot of it. You're able to do it if there's a big order. If there's a big order and we scale up our process so that we're producing it in larger quantities. Because it's going so fast. Not yet? Well, this is making the rope. So it's spinning fast, but if you can see, the collection process is not the fastest. With more sophisticated equipment, it can go a lot faster. This is pretty small scale equipment, so it just goes a meter per minute or so. What's the materials when they come from? How do you, what happens? You just make them out of? No, so we buy carbon nanotubes from suppliers. We have a couple of suppliers we've worked with where we can make this out of any, not any carbon nanotube material. It has to be sufficiently high quality. In particular, the molecular lattices have to be low in defect. So unfortunately, we aren't able to use the cheapest sources of carbon nanotubes, but manufacturers of high quality carbon nanotubes were able to use in our process. Carbon nanotubes is a cool kind of thing, right? I think so, yeah. Is it the ultimate material or what is the story about it? No, it's not the ultimate material because it's not the best in terms of strength. It's not the best in terms of conductivity, but what it is is it's a material that has a combination of properties that is unlike any other material. So if you have an application that requires you to have something conductive and flexible at the same time, this is the best material you can use for that. If you need something that is conductive and lightweight, this is going to work better than any metal wire. So it's really a combination of properties that it has that is unique, but it's not the best in any one single property. So it's going to be everywhere? How soon? Well, anywhere that you need multi-functional material. Hopefully, if we find a good way to make these cables, then it'll be in everywhere in aerospace at any rate and maybe in more places as well. Realistically, we're probably talking five to ten years before you see any sort of widespread adoption, but it could be in consumer products within a year. So, for example, in the wearable space, because that is just ready to go with cables. What do you have? What's going on here? This is a wristband where we sewed in a couple of LEDs and they're just connected with the carbon nanotube yarn. And it demonstrates that you can use this carbon nanotube yarn to connect to electronics. You can show inside kind of whore. Yeah, so this is just a coin cell battery. And you can see that there's some CNT yarn on the back of it. And so that is what's using the connecting the LEDs to the coin cell. You could obviously have a more sophisticated setup where you have more sophisticated electronics. It doesn't have to be LEDs. It can be anything that you need to provide power to. And this can be put into a sewing machine. This was done by hand and needle, but it can be run through a machine. There's another wearable application that, I don't know if your video of our video will work out very well and let me get to the correct portion of it, but this is a video of a test that was done by someone who used our fiber to stitch our fiber into a bit of a space super fabric. And this is then covering it with dust and then running the current through the carbon nanotubes to repel the dust. Is it the current? It's just an AC current through the fiber. This is just demonstrating how you can really stitch that filament into fabric. It's very high voltage, so that's what causes it to actually repel the material. And what you do is nobody else is doing... Who's the biggest carbon nanotube companies out there? What are you doing? The biggest ones are producing the nanotubes. So there's a couple of companies that produce a ton of quantities of carbon nanotubes. And there's also a couple of companies that produce fibers and films. And so those companies include companies like Nanocomp, General Nano. Those are the U.S. companies. There's a couple of companies in China, Japan. But really, we're the ones that make the highest connectivity material. So compared to all the other companies, we have connectivity that's at least a factor of two or three higher than the competition. Cool. All right. Thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks for talking to us.