The Origins of Nanotechnology in Latvia

Abstract

This Paper is a review within a number of the planned articles devoted to finding out and determining a range of scientific activity of the Republic of Latvia on a global scale of nanotechnologies. Purpose of the current Paper is to provide a review on the legal fundamentals in creating a local scientific environment for development of the advanced technologies in Latvia. The main methods applied by the authors are analysis of the scientific and professional literature and official documentation, and logical approach. A focus on the local documentation through integration into the European Union is accepted limitation of the Paper. The main findings ensuring the value of the Paper are: Latvia is not named among the priority regions in the newest EU’s smart specialisation platform. Despite for the nearest years the nanotechnologies are announced in the second priority for the Latvian science development, an international collaboration of Latvia is at very high rate - 70% on average and 77% of the investment volume to the scientific projects is assigned from the EU, limitations in local tooling and professionalism are obvious, it cause currently our country is still at the foundation stage.

The Development of Nanotechnologies and Advanced Materials Industry in Science and Entrepreneurship: Socioeconomic and Technical Indicators. A Case Study of Latvia (Part Two)

“…According to Eurostat data for the period of 2014, in Latvia 884.6 thsd people were employed, taking into account the resident population concept and age group from 15 to 64 years [32], of which 318.7 thsd employees or 36 % of the total number of employees had higher education (the specialisation sector is not indicated) in the 4th quarter of 2014 [33]. In South Korea, one of the leading countries in the nano-field, in 2013 the number of researchers per million people was 6,457, in Latvia -1,802, very close to the number of researchers in Poland (1,851), Bulgaria (1,693) and Italy (1974).…”

Identity of Innovative Multifunctional Material Manufacturing Business in Latvia / Inovatīvu Daudzfunkcionālo Materiālu Ražotāju Identitāte Latvijā

“…Companies Sidrabe, GroGlass, Neomat, NacoTechnologies, Institute of Stomatology of the Latvian Medical Academy are among the main collaborative partners of the scientific institutions. In 2013, 50 habilitated doctors and over 300 doctors conducted the research in materials sciences in Latvia [2]. In the period of eleven years (from 2002 to 2012), 3,275 scientific articles in the Web of Science database by Thomson Reuters were published by the local scientists in the engineering field.…”

Nanotechnologies in Latvia: Commercialisation Aspect

“…These researchers pointed to the lack of young scientists and infrastructure at the pan-European scale, and extremely low private sector investments in R&D in comparison with the rest EU. Staube et al [6] found out that despite the business investments in R&D the GDP increased twice in Latvia from 0.08% to 0.16% in 2001-2012, and even reached to the Government and Higher Education sector's investment level of 0.17%. Last year (2013) the Latvian rate of these investments was the lowest within the Baltic Sea Region (after Belarus) [6].…”

“…The information gathered in the statistical offices from the patenting office databases is used for identification of the country's ranking [6]. In the global market there were certain indices used for financial transactions.…”

“…Narrowing the multifunctional nanocoating technologies' development to the aircraft and spacecraft segment in HT, motor vehicles' manufacturing in MHT, and manufacturing metallic and non-metallic mineral products in MLT, the Latvian researchers are working on the composite coatings in order to improve the durability and the heat-resistance quality of the vehicle components for aircrafts by using ionplasma deposition of multi-component coatings at the business enterprises [6] or academic institutions [7][8][9].…”