Rolith, Inc., a developer of advanced nanostructured coatings and devices, has received $5 million in Series A funding from DFJ VTB Capital Aurora and AGC America Inc.

Rolith’s nanostructured coatings are used in the renewable energy, green building and consumer electronics markets, and the company will utilize the $5 million investment to step up business development in an effort to address the current market need for industrial-scale nanostructured coatings. The investments will also be used to expand the engineering team and further research and development the company said.

Rolith coatings function by a proprietary nanolithography system and was formed by Dr. Boris Kobrin, Prof. Mark Brongersma and Julian Zegelman in 2008.

“We are excited to lead the Series A investment in Rolith, Inc. We believe that the company’s proprietary large-scale nanocoating method has great potential to become the new standard for a vast variety of industrial and consumer applications,” said Aidar Kaliev, global head of venture capital at VTB Capital. “The team has an impressive track-record with several nanotech start-ups, combines Russian and US scientific backgrounds and has the necessary skills and experience to lead the company to success.”

“We are very fortunate to have the support of world’s leading glass producer, AGC (Asahi Glass Company) Group, and DFJ VTB Capital Aurora, a highly reputable nanotechnology investor associated with one of the major Russia’s banking groups, VTB Group,” said Boris Kobrin, founder and CEO of Rolith. “This investment will allow us to scale up our nanostructuring technology to substrate areas larger than what is offered by any competitors and demonstrate feasibility of the first few of our nanostructured coatings.”