America’s Leading Manufacturer of Rare Earth and Advanced Material Products

        U.S. SALES & ADMINISTRATION: 10884 WEYBURN AVE. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA  90024

May 5, 2006

PRESS RELEASE

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AMERICAN ELEMENTS ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF NEW NANOMETAL™ LINE OF NANOSCALE ULTRA THIN FOIL AND FILM

[ May 5, 2006, Los Angeles , CA ] American Elements announced today the introduction to its foil product group, a complete line of fully characterized ultra-thin foils in thicknesses less than one micron thick (1000 nanometers, 0.00004 inches), 1 micron, 2 micron, and up to a few microns thick.

Marketed under the tradename Nanometal™, the new foil manufacturing unit is designed to produce ultra thin foil at extremely competitive costs and has manufactured mounted Foil only 50 nm thick in diameters up to 910 mm. Typically, foils of the following metals are mounted in thicknesses from 20 nm to 1000 nm, depending upon mechanical strength and mounting method: Aluminum, Aluminum oxide (alumina,) Bismuth, Boron, natural and isotopic, Carbon, natural and isotopic, Cerium, Chromium, Cobalt, Collodion (cellulose nitrate), Copper, Dysprosium, Erbium, Germanium, Gold, Indium, Iron, Magnesium, Manganese, Molybdenum, Neodymium, Nickel, Niobium, Ruthenium, Silicon, Silicon dioxide (silica), Silver, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten (wolfram), Vanadium, Yttrium, Zinc, and Zirconium.

Certain ultra-thin foil, including some isotopic foil, can be produced on a substrate with a parting agent to permit removal by floating. This nanoscale foil can then be mounted on frames. Frames may be washers, rings, or more-complicated assemblies. Except for the simplest standard assemblies, these products are made to customer’s specifications. Mounted foil is often used as bandpass filters, used to transmit certain extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) or soft-x-ray wavelengths while absorbing others, typically in the wavelength range of 1 nm to 100 nm, corresponding approximately to the photon energy range of 1000 eV to 10 eV. Other applications include: Synchrotron-radiation-beam locators, selectively transmitting films that protect delicate optics (spectrometers, etc.), ion-beam neutralizer foils, neutral-particle time-of-flight (TOF) detectors, nuclear targets, collectors for space-debris measurements, and streak-camera photo-cathodes.

For further technical and pricing information on American Elements’ full line of advanced ceramic, electronic, glass and structural advanced materials products, please contact your local American Elements distributor or American Elements U.S. corporate headquarters at (1)310-208-0551, FAX (1)310-208-0351 or customerservice@americanelements.com . American Elements is America’s leading manufacturer and supplier of rare earth and other advanced material products with distribution offices in Europe, Asia and South America.