The Pontifical Catholic University Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) has announced it is applying for a patent on a new nanotechnological invention. According to the Minister of Higher Education Ligia Amado Melo and PUCMM rector Monsignor Agripino Nunez, the university has filed for patents in the United States, Taiwan, and in the PCT consortium of 148 countries. According to Dr Fabrice Piazza, head of research at the PUCMM Nanoscience Laboratory, the new process consists of coating a conglomerate of carbon nanotubes of between 100 and 200 nanometers in diameter with silicon carbide and carbon nanocrystals. For an idea of scale, a human hair is 100,000 nanometers in diameter. The process will be useful to industry, biomedicine and electronic applications.