Innovation Kyoto 2016 Investment Limited Partnership ("KYOTO-icap No.1 Fund"), with Kyoto University Innovation Capital Corporation ("Kyoto iCAP") (Head office: Sakyo-ku, Kyoto; Representative Director: Kimi Kusumi) as general partner, has invested in DPS Inc. ("DPS") (Head office: Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto; Representative Director: Hongzhi Shira), a venture company that utilizes the results of research at Kyoto University.

Outline of this investment
DPS is a venture company established in December 2017 to solve problems in various fields using a new material named DualPore™. DualPore™ is an inorganic particle created by further pulverizing silica monoliths with two types of pores (through holes and fine pores) invented by Kazuki Nakanishi, former associate professor at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Science (currently professor at the Nagoya Institute for Future Materials and Systems).

The first challenge DPS will work to solve with DualPore™ is the recycling of precious and rare metals. For example, palladium, which is used in three-way catalysts and in the plating of electrical components, is recovered to a few ppm from solutions produced in the manufacturing and recycling processes of products, and the remainder is disposed of. This is because there was no technology to efficiently recover only palladium from low-concentration solutions. In such a situation, DPS has shown that it can selectively and efficiently recover 99.991 TP3T palladium from a low-concentration palladium solution of 1 ppm by using DualPore™ to diffuse the palladium solution to every corner of the particle without applying high pressure with a small cartridge and adsorb palladium. This has been highly evaluated by users.

Furthermore, DualPore™ has been successful in solving problems in the expected next-generation industries, such as low back pressure in flow chemistry, trace metal removal from raw materials in semiconductor and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and high-precision separation of peptides in mid-molecular drug discovery.

Kyoto iCAP highly evaluated the potential of DPS's business, which contributes to the recycling of precious and rare metals and next-generation industries, and executed a 100 million yen investment in the company.

Outline of DPS Corporation

Establishment	December 2017
Business	Provide the solutions by products of DualPore™ technology, namely bimodal pure silica particles and the packed columns for adsorber/separator/reactor
Head Office Location	Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto
President & CEO	Hongzhi Bai