But the competition is growing, and our market is becoming more important for them, where their products are not in demand due to the lack of mass production of electronics. RMT company calls itself a niche player in the market of thermoelectric micromodules. Nevertheless, it has managed to take a prominent position in its sector: according to the company's estimates, its share here reaches 20% of the world market. RMT exports 95% of its products to the USA, Europe and Southeast Asia. The volume of the market in which the company operates, its CEO Marat Nabiullin estimates at 70-80 million dollars. By the end of 2018 RMT became the first in the rating of Russian high-tech rapidly developing companies "Techuspech" in the nomination "the highest share of exports in turnover." The main competitors of RMT are Japanese and American companies: Japanese KELK, Japanese-Chinese Ferrotec, American Phononic and II-VI Incorporated.

"Venture funds have already invested $ 165 million in one of our American competitors to create a company that competes with us, but they are less successful than we are, — says Mr. Nabiullin. — Yes, you can throw money in the furnace, but it has no economic basis."

In 2011, RUSNANO and the venture capital Fund S-group ventures invested 150 million rubles in RMT, and then RUSNANO constantly lent the company (the total budget of the project, as indicated on the RUSNANO website — 800 million rubles). RMT was born in 1991, and as a Russian-American enterprise RAMET — "Russian-American materials for electronic equipment." As the founder of business Gennady Gromov, a laser scientist, told the magazine "Russian reporter" in 2011, the company was created by people who had experience in the field of semiconductor technology. "The industry was already dying. We were just buying up old stock and selling it to the Americans. Even then it was clear that this topic will soon become obsolete. Well, not raw material to trade! I wanted to produce something of my own," Gromov said. In 1994, they removed the vowels from the company name, and the RMT — "Russian materials and technologies" - appeared. Gradually we came to the decision to move in the direction of thermoelectricity and began to develop thermal coolers.

First in thermoelectricityThere was something to start from. In Russia since 1950-1960-ies there was a strong engineering school in the field of thermoelectricity, in other words, the processes of converting electrical energy into thermal energy, and Vice versa. It was then that there were breakthrough solutions in this area. Russian physicists were able to apply in practice the Peltier effect, named after the French physicist. Experimentally, he found that if you pass an electric current through the plate, which consists of two contiguous semiconductors, one side of the plate is heated and the other is cooled. On the Peltier principle and operate modern thermochemically. "What we are doing now in the field of thermal cooling, in most cases, not even patented, and takes place in the know-how", — says Marat Nabiullin. Another thing is that since then, the Japanese and Americans have made great progress in thermoelectricity, taking leading positions.