Local company continues development in nanotechnology field

WHEAT RIDGE - A small company in Jefferson County is finding itself in the middle of the quickly-developing nanotechnology revolution.

Alio Industries in Wheat Ridge employs just 10 people, but its engineers have designed and are building some of the most finely-tuned robots in the world, the machines can manipulate materials on the molecular level.

Nanotechnology is the science of working with and building products on extremely small scales. There are thousands of new ideas in the industry from tiny medical devices, to indestructible paints, to novel advances in energy and data storage. There are about 70 nanotechnology firms in Colorado, many of them located along Denver's Front Range.

Alio Industries was founded in 2001 by former Lockheed Martin engineer Bill Hennessey. He says the company is already selling millions of dollars worth of robots to industries each year. Some of the end-use applications are military, but most are in the civilian sector.

Alio President Jeff Johnson said the company's robots have an infinite number of applications. One currently being developed is the storage of computer data on a three-dimensional hologram instead of a two-dimensional hard drive surface. Such a hologram would be able to store massive amounts of information.

Another Alio robot is being used by scientists in laser fusion experiments, which, if proved out, could someday make fossil fuels obsolete.

"We are building the most advanced robotics-in-motion systems on the world market," said Johnson. "These systems are built to move in nanometer increments. That's about one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair.

Johnson describes developments in the nanotechnology industry as, "pretty wild because of what it means to the common person. Being able to manipulate genetic material or biomaterial or other things at that small scale is going to open up a huge number of new inventions and technologies."