Intellectual Property Law

US Patent 7509961 - Nanofibril cigarettes

This patent from Philip Morris teaches a way to manufacture cigarettes with less carbon monoxide in the smoke based on the use of nanofibrils for conversion of CO to CO2. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method for forming nanostructured fibrils directly on a component of a cigarette comprising:

supporting a target in a chamber having first and second electrodes;

applying an electrical bias between the first and second electrodes to form electrical field lines between the electrodes;

supporting the cigarette component on the first electrode, and bombarding the target with energetic ions to form nanoscale particles from the target material that agglomerate with each other along the direction of the electrical field lines to form nanostructured fibrils on the cigarette component.

Full post as published by TinytechIP on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).