The new year has seen some auspicious nanotechnology announcements from major corporations. On 6 February, Eastman Kodak, based in New York, rolled out nanotechnology-based ink and jets for printers. Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel have all announced progress in microchip performance, based on innovation at the nanoscale.

Not all this excitement, however, has been reflected in the Lux Nanotechnology Index, which tracks the performance of companies that produce and use nanotechnology products.

The index started the year drifting down, but picked up a little in February. Peter Hebert of Lux Research, the New York consultancy that compiles the index, says that good and bad company news has been pulling the index in opposite directions.

On the plus side, Oregon-based FEI, which makes scanning electron and focused ion-beam microscopes, saw its shares leap ahead from US$25 to $33 after results were released on 7 February. Its sales for the last quarter of 2006 were up 41% from the year before, to $140 million.

Investors were less impressed by NVE Corporation, a small, Minneapolis-based specialist in spintronics, and research-tools supplier Symyx Technologies, based in California. Although both companies announced that investors' profits and sales were up, the rises were not enough to satisfy their investors.

Hebert sees these companies' results as boding well. FEI's results in particular, he says, show that corporate demand for nanotechnology tools “is really ramping up”.