NanoTech Materials Brings Thermal Coatings Technology to Wildfires, Roofs

Coatings provide a lot more than aesthetic benefits to surfaces. For example, some coatings provide functional advantages that can enhance safety, while others provide benefits such as reducing costs of heating and air conditioning.

NanoTech Materials, a Houston, TX-based thermal resistance specialist, has developed some of the most ground-breaking coatings seen in recent years. At a time when wildfires are making headlines across the US, NanoTech’s Wildfire Shield Coating, which includes its Insulative Ceramic Particle (ICP™) technology, provides passive fire protection for open air wooden infrastructure from wildfires. Meanwhile, NanoTech Cool Roof Coat helps keep buildings cooler, thus saving on energy and money.

NanoTech Materials’ ICP technology has caught the eye of TIME, which named the company to its prestigious list of has been named to TIME’s prestigious list of the Best Inventions of 2024. As the company continues to grow, it is looking ahead to expanding its reach and developing new product lines to mitigate heat across the building envelope, logistics, and heavy infrastructure sectors.

The History of NanoTech Materials

NanoTech Materials was founded in 2020, when a video by Brazilian professor Claudinei Calado caught the eye of two Texas entrepreneurs who saw the potential for the technology.

“Professor C is the inventor of our ICP technology,” said Carrie Horazeck, chief commercial officer for NanoTech Materials. “He is a true savant when it comes to thermodynamics and is still the driver behind our rapid prototyping coatings lab today.

“Our CEO Mike Francis and CTO Hani Taan met with him and decided on the spot to quit their current roles and start the company,” Horazeck added. “It was a true garage startup. We had a breakthrough innovation, a particle that could control heat in a new way, and we spent the first two years figuring out what markets we wanted to focus on and ultimately settled on heat mitigation for the built environment, logistics, and heavy infrastructure sectors.

“The first video was shot on a cellphone and loaded to YouTube,” Horazeck noted. “The clip was picked up by NASA. Our first shipment of product was hand crushed in a driveway, blended in kitchen blenders from Target, cured in a backyard BBQ, and placed in an old Home Depot bucket with a hand-printed label. Four years later and we are venture-backed, ISO 9001 certified, ICC and CRRC certified, and are producing at scale in our own 42,000 square foot facility in Katy, TX, capable of coating 55 million square feet of roofs annually. It’s been quite a ride.”

Supported by three venture capital firms, three corporate strategics, and seven family offices, the company grew rapidly and joined the Halliburton Labs Clean Energy Accelerator and the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator.

Being selected as one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2024 underscores the possibilities that NanoTech’s ICP technology offers.

“Being named to TIME’s Best Inventions of 2024 is a tremendous honor and further acknowledges NanoTech’s critical role in adaptive materials to meet the demands of a warming planet and heightened wildfire risks,” said Francis, CEO and co-founder of NanoTech Materials. “Our patented Insulative Ceramic Particle technology was developed to tackle critical gaps in energy use and climate impact by addressing needs from commercial facilities to vulnerable communities in wildfire zones.”

Key Markets

NanoTech’s key markets are passive fire protection and building envelope heat mitigation. For example, Wildfire Shield Coating is ideal for fire mitigation, but it is also effective as an insert for the safe transport of lithium-ion batteries. NanoTech Cool Roof Coat can be used on roofs as well as vehicles and containers.

“Our goal was to start on roofs and prove what we could do from a heat reduction, energy efficiency perspective and then cascade to exteriors wall coatings, which we are releasing in Q1 of next year, and eventually coatings for windows,” Horazeck added.

NanoTech incorporates its ICP technology into all of its coating lines.

“Our ICP is constant. The thing that changes is the carrier and the matrix,” said Horazeck. “For example, Cool Roof has to have a certain elasticity and provide waterproofing benefits while our wildfire shield must pass higher thermal load tests.”

Protecting Against Wildfires

NanoTech Materials is in two very interesting and critical markets, beginning with wildfires and Wildfire Shield, which the California Department of Transportation is currently utilizing for passive fire protection on wood timber laggings for highways and bridges across the state.

“Our core technology has two key thermal properties,” said Horazeck. “The first is a very high emissivity score that pushes heat away from the substance. These types of coatings tend to be highly absorbent, but our particle pairs these phenomena with an ultra-low thermal conductivity score. The fire line differentiates us from intumescent paints, which use reactivation energy to stop a fire. These require a lot of chemicals, some of which are toxic. These require a lot of chemicals, some of which are toxic. This contributes to toxic smoke inhalation.”

Because NanoTech’s Wildfire Shield coating does not require a chemical reaction, it can last through multiple thermal cycles without releasing toxic chemicals into the air.

“Our particle does not require a reactivation temperature – the particle sinters to create a hardened shield,” Horazeck observed.” It can go through multiple fires and thermal cycles. Our Wildfire Shield is targeted for structures – earth-retention walls, highway and bridge infrastructure, logging facilities, barriers, utility poles, wooden fences around neighborhoods, and can act as a barrier to the fire. This allows the user to shore up the infrastructure with passive fire protection without moving to more expensive concrete shoring systems. For example, we have several projects going on with high-value vineyards that are currently uninsurable. In our tests, inside walls never got above 15 degrees above ambient temperature.”

Cool Roofs

Cool roof coatings systems are a game-changer in the energy efficiency space. NanoTech Materials leverages low thermal conductivity and high emissivity in addition to reflectivity, enabling enhanced thermal performance.

“Reflectivite coatings are based on very sound science, and we do that too,” said Horazeck. “But when you take something white outside, it gets dirty, and your reflectivity and thermal performance go down. Reflective-only coatings will never pay for themselves.

“By putting our insulative ceramic particle in the coating, we create a physical barrier between the roof itself, adding both physical and surface level protection,” she added. “For a single-story metal building, we can reduce the cooling load on an HVAC unit by up to 49%. It also translates to reduced scope 2 carbon emissions from the HVAC unit. The coating and labor will typically pay for itself inside of the warranty period and often much faster. We are working with three different Fortune 500 companies right now that tend to have large retail spaces.”

Horazeck sees a bright future ahead for NanoTech Materials.

“We have some big customers,” she said. “On the wildfire side, we are working with the California Department of Transportation, who is a really big believer in our technology, and we are expanding into other states that you would not consider to be fire-prone. The company aims to become the global name in heat mitigation for the built environment, logistics, and heavy infrastructure. Our goal is to create the safest and most energy efficient  buildings and infrastructure of today and prepare the world for the heat driven, climate realities of the future.”