POSS [Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes] is a revolutionary new Nanotechnology based on silicon-derived building blocks that provide nanometer-scale control to dramatically improve the thermal and mechanical properties of traditional polymers while offering easy incorporation using existing manufacturing protocols. These compounds have an average diameter of just 1.5 nanometers, or billionth of a meter. POSS® nanomaterials can be used both as direct replacements for hydrocarbon based materials or as low-density performance additives to traditional plastics. They release no VOCs, and, thereby, produce no odor or air pollution. They are biocompatible, recyclable, non-flammable, and competitively priced with traditional polymer feedstocks. POSS® Nanostructured® materials can be readily incorporated into virtually any existing polymer system through blending, grafting or copolymerization. POSS® nanoscopic chemical technology provides unique opportunities to create revolutionary material combinations through melding the desirable properties of ceramics and polymers at the 1 nm level. These new materials will enable the circumvention of classic material performance trade-offs by accessing new properties and exploiting the synergy between materials that only occur when the length-scale of morphology and the fundamental physics associated with a property coincide on the nanoscale.

These POSS® nanobuilding-blocks were hailed by R&D magazine as one of the 100 globally most technologically significant new products for the year 2000. Hybrid Plastics was one of five finalists in Small Times Magazine%u2019s 2002 Best of Small Tech Award. In December 2005, a Presidential Determination deemed POSS® Nanotechnology to be in the strategic national interest of the United States.