October 1, 2016 The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan is consulting NPL’s Caterina Minelli to develop measurement methods for nanoparticles in wastewaters from the manufacturing plants of the semiconductor industry. Health and environmental concerns for such particles are motivating ITRI to tackle the significant challenge of measuring nanoparticle concentrations below 1000 nanoparticle/mL for nanoparticles with size below 20 nm. With Caterina, scientists at ITRI have been discussing important issues related to measuring the size and concentration of nanoparticles, as well as the benefit, potentials and limitations of a range of techniques. Caterina also provided the valuable connection of ITRI scientists with instrument manufacturers and other experts in the field, as well as the closely related EMPIR Innanopart project, led by NPL. Yu-Shan Yeh from ITRI wrote to Caterina: “Many of our group members were inspired by your talk and started to have new ideas on this project. It is especially important for us since we are about to hand in our proposal for 2017 at the beginning of November. […] We are grateful to have the opportunity to be a Collaborator in the Innanopart project and look forward to participating in more events from this project, including inter-laboratory comparison.”
