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GREENSBORO — Paul Clayson’s slide of a stripped-down automobile, showing only its wheels and power train, looked like the bones of a child’s plastic model before the body had been glued on.

Some of Clayson’s technology, however, may be better suited for Elroy Jetson’s toy box because of its revolutionary properties.

Nanotechnology — the science of making materials really, really small — helps create coatings for this car’s working parts that give it more horsepower and better gas mileage by reducing heat and friction in strategic areas.

Clayson is chairman and CEO of nCoat Inc., the Whitsett company that makes this and other products for diesel trucks, aircraft, motorcycles and performance racing.

Many of its 70 workers don’t need specialized degrees to work with nanotechnology, he said. They need training, but their work requires only advanced manufacturing skills because his company’s coatings are relatively simple — from a nanotech point of view.

“Our workers came from all kinds of industries and backgrounds,” said Clayson, whose company moved to Whitsett in 2006. “We have former movers and mechanics, factory workers from textiles and tobacco, workers in retail and real estate.”

Those workers could represent the future of the Piedmont Triad’s economy, where unskilled manufacturing workers have lost jobs by the tens of thousands in the past decade.

The Triad is becoming an educational and research center for nanotechnology that will create both trained workers and high-level scientists who could pursue careers in various jobs and disciplines.

Nanotechnology spans a range of products and services, from better ways of delivering chemotherapy to making solar energy cells more efficient.

It’s the small size — 1/100 nanometers, about 10,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper — that makes these particles so versatile. They can flow through human tissues, bond with metals and collect light depending on the ways they are manipulated in the lab.

The state proved last week it believes the Triad is making all the right moves in this technology when it held the annual N.C. Nanotechnology Commercialization Conference in Greensboro for the first time.

The conference was designed to give researchers and businesses tips on taking an idea from the lab to the marketplace.

Forsyth Technical Community College, for example, is the only community college in the Southeast building a nanotechnology program, said Kevin Conley, the program’s coordinator and author of the state’s curriculum for nanotechnology.

His program will offer a variety of degrees, from certificates and associate’s degrees to diplomas for people with bachelor’s degrees who may be unemployed and seeking a new career.

Teaching fundamental skills that can be applied in a variety of nanotech industries is a key element of Conley’s program.

“I’m targeting about 200 high school students in the Triad” who may be interested in the program for college transfers, he said. “I’m also targeting perhaps 1,000 people who are out of work across the state because they can relocate.

“We’re also looking at maybe 200 incumbent workers across the state who are looking to retool for contemporary nanotechnology.”

After it moved here, nCoat worked with GTCC to help train its employees.

Many believe these steps will spawn homegrown companies and attract educated professionals, entrepreneurs and investors to this region.

Two companies, for example, were created by researchers at Wake Forest University.

One, PureLux, offers highly efficient lighting that is cool to the touch and saves electricity.

Another, FiberCell, offers three-dimensional particles for solar cells that can collect sunlight at all times of day rather than flat cells that are only efficient at peak times.

The Research Triangle area has the state’s strongest

concentration in these industries, but the UNC system is about to make Greensboro a big player with the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering.

A research and education center for graduate scientists and engineers, the school will be shared by UNCG and N.C. A&T.

Funded by a $58 million state grant, the school is being built at the Gateway University Research Park on East Lee Street. The cutting-edge building will offer advanced equipment for professors and students, said James Ryan, the school’s founding dean.

Ryan believes in a limitless future worldwide for nanotechnology, but he is careful in describing its impact on the Triad: “I believe we’ll see growth, but perhaps in a complicated fashion.”

Companies will spin out of research from the joint school, he said.

Researchers from other universities and established companies may be able to use the unique laboratories at the school.

“They gain leverage by working with us,” Ryan said. “We gain leverage by working with them.”

The joint school also will hammer home a message to local students that they can train for any kind of job in nanotechnology fields.

Paul Clayson of nCoat said a state with a trained high-tech work force will attract entrepreneurs who can move their companies to where the workers are.

Jobs usually not associated with science will be needed to help build the joint school and keep it maintained.

A clean room — a highly specialized sealed room where the atmosphere is controlled and even the smallest particles can be eliminated — needs designers, architects and specialized plumbers who can do the job to exacting scientific standards.

“I saw one case where a construction company founded its own school to train workers,” Ryan said.

Forsyth Tech’s program will help fill gaps throughout the work force, he said.

“You find certain places in the country that have a highly skilled work force in all levels,” he said.

That makes it easier for entrepreneurs to spin research into businesses. It also attracts those specialized business services.

Ryan said one of the best ways to encourage this is already under way at the Piedmont Triad Partnership, the region’s leading economic development group. That group has focused on four segments of the economy it wants to develop, one of which is nanotechnology.

He has met with Forsyth Tech officials and plans a meeting at GTCC in the coming days.

“This is one of the key industrial directions of this area,” he said.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com