5N Plus, Amerigon Establish Partnership to Develop and Manufacture Advanced Thermoelectric Materials

5N Plus Inc. and Amerigon Inc.announced that they have established a partnership, to be called “ZT Plus,” todevelop and manufacture advanced, more efficient thermoelectric materials designed to enable the use ofTE technology in a wide variety of heating and cooling and power generation applications for industrial,consumer, medical, electronics and automotive markets.

Nicholas Audet, manager of research and development of 5N Plus, will lead the new partnership in its initial stages.

Amerigon’s advanced technologysubsidiary BSST along with its university partners have performed extensive research into thedevelopment of the next generation of TE materials.They have successfully developed materials thatsignificantly outperform the best presently available TE materials.

“We are a leader inspecialty materials for the electronics industry and see a unique opportunity to team-up with Amerigon,an industry leader in advanced thermoelectric technologies,” said Jacques L’Écuyer, 5N Plus president and CEO. “We believe this new relationship will allowus to diversify and expand our business into additional high-growth markets with a strong clean-technology focus, through, for example, waste heat recovery applications.We are excited about theseopportunities and as a result have seconded Nicholas Audet, our manager of research and development, to the new partnership to lead these activities in their early stages.”

“Our partnership with 5N Plus combines the intellectual property and expertise inthermoelectrics of Amerigon’s BSST subsidiary, and its university partners, with the experience in thepurification, compounding and manufacturing of thermoelectric materials of 5N Plus,” said Lon E. Bell,
president of BSST.“The agreement grants BSST the right to purchase these new, more efficientmaterials for early use in the automotive, power generation from waste heat, and HVAC markets.”

“This is an important milestone for Amerigon and allows us to continue our global leadership inthermoelectric technology and to continue to bring efficient, effective and practical thermoelectricsolutions to market,” said Daniel R. Coker, Amerigon president and CEO. “Thedevelopment of more efficient materials is the key to unlocking the vast potential of our thermoelectrictechnology and to creating new products for a broad variety of global markets.”