Nanosys Receives World-wide Exclusive Rights to Commercialize Nanocomposite Solar Cell Technology from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Columbia University, Solidifying Position in the Field

Palo Alto, CA - (June 9, 2003). Nanosys, Inc. announced today that it has signed exclusive licensing agreements for world-wide rights to a broad set of intellectual properties covering materials and technologies of nanocomposite solar cells developed by two of the world’s leading nanotechnology centers: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Columbia University. The licensed patents cover important aspects of nanocomposite solar cells based on inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials such as nanocrystals, nanorods and nanowires.

“In the development of a new industry, it’s important to control the intellectual property,“ commented Nanosys cofounder and Director of Business Development, Dr. Stephen Empedocles. “These broad-reaching patents cover some of the most fundamental aspects of nanocomposite solar technology based on inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials, substantially strengthening our position in this field. This addition to our intellectual property portfolio demonstrates our commitment and belief that a strong IP position and an excellent team go hand-in-hand in successfully building a new technology platform. Combined with our latest $38 Million financing and our recent partnership with Matsushita Electric Works, these licenses will help us accelerate this technology into the market.”

The photovoltaic industry has been growing rapidly in recent years, but growth is still hampered by the high cost of traditional inorganic semiconductor solar cells that makes solar energy substantially more expensive than energy generated from fossil fuels. By incorporating inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials into a flexible host-matrix and using roll-to-roll processing to fabricate the final solar cell (similar to that developed for manufacturing photographic film), nanocomposite solar technology marries the high efficiency of inorganic semiconductor crystals with the processability of plastics. Once commercialized, this technology will revolutionize the photovoltaics industry by offering high efficiency, low cost and conformal solar cell modules that can be easily integrated into any location where energy is needed. Nanosys has already established its first major corporate partnership in this area with Matsushita Electric Works to jointly develop and incorporate these nanocomposite solar cells into building materials for residential and commercial facilities in Asia. Multiple other corporate partnerships in other solar markets and other areas of the world are being established as well.

About Nanosys

Nanosys, Inc, is a rapidly growing advanced technology company, leading the burgeoning nanotechnology industry, through the development of nano-enabled systems. These systems incorporate novel and patent-protected nanostructures that integrate functional complexity directly into each individual nanoparticle, enabling the low-cost fabrication of revolutionary high-value, high-performance applications in a broad range of industries from life and physical sciences to information technology and communications to renewable energy and defense. These nanostructures include nanowires, nanorods, nanotetrapods and nanodots formed from all of the industrially important semiconductor materials (Group II-VI, III-V and IV) as their principal active elements. These systems exploit the fundamentally new and unique electronic, optical, magnetic, interface and integration properties associated with materials on the nanometer-scale. The initial applications include exquisitely sensitive chemical and biological sensors, high performance large area macroelectronics and lightweight high efficiency conformal photovoltaics.

About Columbia University

Founded in 1754, Columbia University is one of the world's premier research institutions. Throughout Columbia's schools and divisions, leading scientists are pursuing research and making discoveries that are having a profound impact on our lives and our world. Columbia University established Science & Technology Ventures (S&TV) to facilitate the transfer of scientific discovery and innovation from the university setting to the marketplace and to ensure that both the inventor and the University's research and educational activities benefit from that transfer. For more details, visit www.stv.columbia.edu.

About Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by University of California. More information can be found at http://www.lbl.gov.

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