Quantum Dot Corp.

If Joel Martin's experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist taught him anything, it was that investors in today's biotech markets are looking to put their money into companies possessing technologies that have the potential to generate revenues quickly. Martin, who founded Argonaut Technologies Inc. and helped launch Pharmacopeia Inc. , says that he and Bala Manian, the founder of Lumisys Inc. and Molecular Dynamics Inc. (later purchased by Amersham Pharmacia Biotech Ltd.[See Deal]), sifted through hundreds of technologies before finding just what they were looking for in the quantum dot work of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory .

Quantum dot particles are extremely small (nanometer scale) semiconductor crystals that light up like molecular scale LEDs (light emitting diodes). These crystals were originally developed to study the properties of...