technology spinoff means business -->

Oct. 15--Nanotechnology's latest party trick involves red wine and a pair of white jeans.

Shay Curran, the University of Houston's nanotechnology expert, does it like this: Pour the wine onto the jeans and watch it pool up like water on glass. Then give the jeans a quick snap and watch the wine fall right off.

Because of a special coating made of particles so tiny and thin that they can't be felt by the human hand, the white jeans stay as good as new, Curran said.

Curran used the trick in Europe, while demonstrating the University of Houston's first nanotechnology product during a competition in the Netherlands.

"They were saying do something interesting, do wine," said Curran, who is the director of the university's Institute for NanoEnergy.

Five companies -- makers of carpets, fabrics, threads, tarps and glass -- will be the first to test the coating, said Curran, who is CEO of a firm called C-Voltaics that the university is spinning off to sell the coating.

Spinoff companies are common for research universities, which get royalties from technology developed in their labs. While the University of Houston has at least 17 such companies, C-Voltaics is its first in the field of nanotechnology, which Rice University has dominated in Texas.

The businesses testing C-Voltaics' material probably will begin selling products treated with the coating as early as next spring, Curran said, and C-Voltaics also hopes to begin selling a consumer-oriented wood coating online within the next eight weeks.

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UH nanotechnology spinoff means business