The Society “Center for Advanced Nano-Technologies” (NANO-CAT S.r.l.) was founded in 2006 with the objective of offering services and innovative products in the area of new materials.

NANO-CAT S.r.l. is Small Medium Enterprise located in L’Aquila, 100 km from ROME (ITALY) , born from an academic spin-off project promoted with the support of the Department of Physics University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila.

Primary business activities are mainly focussed in the field of innovative materials and coatings in two main direction:

I. Coating Development, Design of Engineering Materials for Industrial Applications
II. Materials Characterization and Testing

I. NANO-CAT S.r.l. concentrates on inorganic-organic, Inorganic-polymer nanocomposites, as well as self-organising nano-structures based on physical, and chemical nanotechnology; in particular, the company's focus lies on materials-based processes to develop, manufacture and market multifunctional coatings. These materials can be custom-made to possess a wide range of characteristics properties such as structural, chemical (corrosion prevention), physical (optical transprency), mechanical (hardness, fatigue), electrical and tribological (wear and friction) etc., Depending on the needs of industrial or SME customers, NANO-CAT works out solutions based on special nanostructured materials, surface engineering (at micro and nanolevel) and develops key innovative materials for high-tech products. As a complete-services provider, NANO-CAT offers turnkey solutions as well as solutions to specific tasks: the spectrum of services provided ranges from innovation consulting to materials engineering, production, applications support, marketing all the way to high-availability services. NANO-CAT shares and has free access to instrumental University facilities for thin and thick film deposition techniques like:

- Physical Vapour Deposition (RF sputtering, e-beam, thermal evaporation)
- Chemical Vapour Deposition (Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition)
- Wet Chemical Deposition (Sol-Gel: spin and dip process)

II. NANO-CAT provides a responsive, confidential, professional contract analytical service on solid materials to industry and universities.The Material characterization and testing activity, carried out in collaboration with primary academic institutions (Department of Physics and Dept. Of Chemistry and Materials of L’Aquila University), has gained NANO-CAT the opportunity to improve basic know-how and operating competence in the following areas of materials characterisationand testing:

- Surface characterization (XPS, AES)
- Structural properties (XRD, XRR)
- Optical properties (UV-visible, FT-Infra Red, Raman)
- Microscopies (Optical, SEM,TEM, AFM)
- Electrical characterization (dc and ac mode)
- Corrosion and humidity testing under selected environmental conditions
- Characterization of density, surface area, porosity, adhesion, hydrophobicity of materials
- Characterization of thermal, mechanical and tribological properties of materials
- Characterization of material durability and environmental compatibility