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July 10, 2009: Applied Nanotech said it is licensing an unidentified “leading industrial chemical products company in Japan” to manufacture and commercialize its technology for copper-based nanoparticle inks and pastes.

Under terms of the deal, the firm will get $1.5M up-front ($500K paid immediately, the rest in June 2010) plus 4% royalties on sales by the partner. Also, they are in talks about a new R&D project beginning in October to transition to the fourth phase of the project that began in 2006.

“This is a giant step toward implementing our Technical Inks Printing Solution (‘TIPS’) strategy based on five important modules: nanoparticles manufacturing, inks development and manufacturing, technical printing applications development, processing development, and adequate hardware,” noted Applied Nanotech CEO Zvi Yaniv, in a statement. “Securing a trusted, high quality technology partner with a broad base of products used in electronic applications plays a vital role in our approach.”

The company’s chairman added that the license “provides strong support for the viability of our business model,” and went further to characterize this deal possibly “as a seminal event in our company’s history.”

by Howard Lovy, contributing editor

Like nanotechnology in general, carbon nanotubes (CNT) are seen — depending on the industry you’re in and your world outlook — as the enabling technology for cleantech or a possible environmental and health hazard. They are viewed as a creator of jobs and of new market opportunities. They are optimistically seen as an engine for an elevator to the stars and a lift out of economic recession.

They can, of course, already be seen in a few products, like tennis rackets and bicycles, but nothing on the scale that yet match the hype that has surrounded them in the decade and a half since they were first produced. However, if you take a look at some of the companies, new and old, that are developing new ways of making and applying CNTs, you might cautiously conclude that nanotube prosperity is right around the corner.

Here, then, are a few snapshots of companies that are betting the farm on nanotubes, trying their luck at the little miracle workers in a big way.

Bayer MaterialScience

In Chempark Leverkusen, in Germany’s Rhineland region, Bayer MaterialScience is attempting to conquer the market for nanotubes, which it estimates will grow at an annual rate of 25%. In 10 years, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant believes annual carbon nanotube sales are expected to reach $2 billion. The company is preparing now for this expected windfall by building what it is calling the largest nanotube factory in the world, investing around $29 million on the project and creating about 20 jobs. The project adds to a pilot plant with an annual capacity of 60 tons that has been in operation in Laufenburg in southern Germany since 2007.

Bayer MaterialScience claims to be one of the few companies that can produce carbon nanotubes of consistently high quality on an industrial scale. “Bayer is investing in this, the world’s largest CNT production plant, because we are convinced of the technological and economic efficiency of the process,” said Wolfgang Plischke, a member of the Bayer AG Board of Management responsible for innovation, technology and the environment.

Bayer is not alone. Its efforts have the backing of more than 80 partners from industry and science, which have joined together to develop new technologies and applications for carbon nanotube-based materials. The effort is part of the “Innovation Alliance Carbon Nanotubes” (Inno.CNT), created with the support of Germany’s Federal Ministry for Education and Research.


Baytubes production process illustration. (Source: Bayer MaterialScience)

What Bayer is doing is important for a couple of other reasons beyond the mere scope of the project. While mainstream media coverage of nanotubes has focused primarily on what is not known about the environmental and health effects of nanotubes, Bayer is focusing its efforts on what is known about them — they help forge a path toward greener technology. As part of a companywide push to develop sustainable technologies, Bayer is working on membranes to produce fresh water through seawater desalination.

And in December, the US Environmental Protection Agency gave Bayer MaterialScience regulatory approval to sell its multiwall carbon nanotubes — what it calls Baytubes — in the United States.

BayTubes were developed through a collaboration between Bayer Technology Services and Bayer Material Science to develop a cost-effective production process for CNTs that paves the way for their industrial application. Baytubes make plastics not only electrically conductive, but also very stable and strong, while keeping the material extremely lightweight, the company says. These improved properties are already being put to use today in the production of various sports goods, such as ski poles and baseball bats.

Nanocomp

Nanocomp Inc., based in New Hampshire, is answering the call from the aerospace industry for materials that are lightweight and strong with high thermal and electrical conductivity. Nanotubes seem a natural for this purpose, and the US Air Force seems to agree, granting the company a number of contracts under the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

With Nanocomp’s CNTs as a test case, the Air Force is hoping to finally replace copper wiring with nanotubes, which are much lighter and harder to break down. Nanocomp will use this funding to advance the suitability of nanotube-based material for a number of aerospace applications, ranging from thermal management and electromagnetic shielding to electrical and power generation system enhancements.


Nanocomp production furnaces. (Source: Nanocomp Inc.)

The first SBIR award builds upon Nanocomp’s successful demonstration, accomplished under a Phase I contract awarded in early 2008, of the use of lightweight conductive wires made from CNTs. During Phase II, Nanocomp will work toward optimizing processing and manufacturing methods to produce CNT wiring in the quantities and forms required for direct integration into aircraft electric power applications.

The Air Force awarded Nanocomp a second SBIR contract to develop carbon nanotubes as a viable substitute for nickel-based conductors in electrostatic discharge (ESD) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding applications. This Phase I research has been designated as a “critical program,” indicating that the government places a high degree of importance on the research. The goals of this program are to optimize the properties of CNT sheet materials to meet shielding requirements, develop a process to integrate the mats into existing commercial EMI/ESD shielding systems, and develop on-line production quality-control methods.

Unidym

Unidym, through acquisition, is the company that ended up inheriting the groundbreaking work of the late Rick Smalley, one of the original discoverers of the carbon nanotube. Unidym is owned by Pasadena, CA-based Arrowhead Research Corp., which has its hands in many different types of nanotech companies. It appears to have pinned its highest hopes, however, on Unidym’s ability to turn its deep nanotube intellectual property into business success — Arrowhead recently upped its ownership in Unidym from 51.5% to 58.1%. Still, it was not able to stop burning cash and aborted a planned IPO, and laid off half its staff in Houston.

Still, Unidym plans its first product release in the second half of 2009: rolls of its carbon-nanotube-coated plastic films. The transparent, conductive films could make manufacturing LCD screens faster and cheaper, and enhance the life of touch panels used in ATM screens and supermarket kiosks. They might also pave the way for flexible thin-film solar cells and bright, roll-up color displays for cell phones, billboards, and electronic books and magazines. The company has said that Unidym is already working with leading touch-panel makers, and recently announced a year-long joint development partnership with LG Display.


Carbon nanotubes dispersed in polycarbonate, which is highly electrically conductive. Formed into an enclosure for sensitive electronics, this plastic protects the internal circuitry from external radio-frequency interference, and prevents escape of radio-frequency interference from within the enclosure. (Source: UniDym)

To further Unidym’s push into electronics and displays, it formed an important partnership with Continental Carbon Company (“CCC”), a global provider of carbon blacks, conductive blacks, and carbon nanotubes, to take over its bulk CNT business. The agreement is the latest in a series of steps taken by Unidym to accelerate the development of its CNT technology for application to the electronics industry and reduce its cost structure. It is intended to provide Unidym and its partners with a reliable and scalable source of high quality CNTs by leveraging CCC’s deep experience manufacturing large quantities of carbon materials. In addition, it will allow Unidym to capture additional value from its extensive CNT patent portfolio by enabling CCNI to focus on end-markets that are not core to Unidym’s business.

The market

Other companies, such as Nantero, are continuing their quest to make nanotubes an integral part of future electronics — in Nantero’s case, nonvolatile memory. Others, like Cheap Tubes Inc., are going for bulk (as their name implies). And while some inroads have been made, much of the promise of nanotubes remain just that — a promise. Some analysts have said that nanotubes are a promising technology in search of a market that has largely been uninterested until now. Other analysts are more optimistic — the Freedonia Group projects the total demand for carbon nanotubes is expected to be about $1 billion by 2014, up from $6 million in 2004. Still others are cautious, as environmental and health regulatory agencies worldwide weigh in on the “unknowns” about environmental and health effects.

So, companies like Bayer, Unidym, and Nanocomp choose to remain optimistic that, during a time when nothing is certain, there is at least a certain market waiting for those who know how to find the right formula to produce and market this nanomaterial of the future.

Howard Lovy has been covering nanotechnology since 2001. E-mail: [email protected].

July 9, 2009: Spurred by the two hottest devices — Apple’s iPhone and the Palm Pre — accelerometers will be shipped in one out of every three phones in 2010, up from out of five phones this year and just one out of 10 phones in 2008, according to a new analysis from iSuppli Corp.

The devices are gaining popularity and fame mainly because of user interface and interaction — e.g. tipping the screen to the side alters the view from portrait to landscape, and in gaming applications where shaking the screen simulates rolling the dice. “With their capability to detect and measure motion, accelerometers are the critical enablers of these features, which are an essential element of what makes these smart phones so popular. These capabilities now are spreading beyond smart phones to other types of handsets,” notes Jérémie Bouchaud, iSuppli’s director and principal analyst for MEMS, in a statement. But 3-axis MEMS accelerometer motion sensors in phones also take on power management and shake modes for controlling music phone tracks, context awareness, and pedometers.

iSuppli’s recent teardown of the iPhone 3G noted a 3-axis accelerometer from STMicroelectronics, which also works with the device’s digital compass to orient maps to the direction a user is facing. And a teardown of the Palm Pre revealed a Kionix MEMS accelerometer and inclinometer.


Figure 1. Global penetration of accelerometers in all types of mobile phones (% of total mobile phone shipments). Source: iSuppli

Beyond these two electronics devices, accelerometers are seeing broad adoption by other handset makers. Eighteen percent of new phones introduced since January (iSuppli tracks >1000 phones from 32 manufacturers, 99% of total shipments) integrated an accelerometer, and this should increase in 2H09, the firm notes. Eighteen of Sony Ericsson’s 19 new phone models introduced this year have accelerometers; Nokia has integrated motion-sensing accelerometers in 38% of its new handset platforms since January. Samsung and LG also are offering new phones with these components.

iSuppli forecasts the broader market for MEMS in mobile phones will more than triple between 2008 and 2013, rising to $1.6B in sales. Other MEMS devices already being incorporated into phones include microphones, BAW duplexers and filters, MEMS autofocus actuators, pressure sensors, and pico-projectors; gyroscopes are expected to be added to the mix in early 2010.


Figure 2. Worldwide sales of MEMS for use in mobile phones, in US $M. Source: iSuppli

by Dr. Paula Doe, contributing editor

July 8, 2009: The much-hyped properties of materials at the nanoscale are finally starting to be applied to some real electronics applications, ranging from near-ideal thermoelectric material based on spray-on semiconductor nanocrystals, to transparent conductive films made from carbon nanotubes and self assembled silver nanoparticles, to ultrasensitive nanoscale MEMS gas sensors.

Nanoscale materials properties are enabling efficient, low-cost thermoelectric materials. Though long studied, thermoelectric conversion of heat to electricity have never been efficient enough to be practical for most applications. “They were stuck with natural materials,” says Evident Technologies CEO Clinton Ballinger. “But with nano-structured materials you have a lot more materials to work with. You can change the thermal properties.” That means it is possible to design something that approximates the ideal thermoelectric material, conducting electricity well but not heat. Modeling suggests that the most efficient structure would be point sources of excited electrons distributed evenly in a matrix — and that ideal efficient material can be approximated quite well by a low-cost solution, using colloidal ink containing semiconductor nanocrystals to create a bulk material while retaining the nano properties.

Ballinger suggests that some of the first markets for this technology will be in the semiconductor industry, where it could enable efficient, flexible, solid-state cooling for integrated circuits and LEDs. This could greatly reduce the size or need for a heat sink, he argues, and potentially improve performance. “Right now we’re just spraying it on with an airbrush,” he notes. “So it could likely be coated right on the chip for thermoelectric cooling.”

First application is likely to be for less sophisticated solid-state cooling, though, such as spot cooling for things like wine coolers. But eventual markets for low-cost roll-to-roll coated thermoelectric films could also include waste heat recovery in automobiles and central power stations, general heating and cooling, and even power generation.

Likely closer to market are transparent conductive films using innovative nanomaterials to potentially challenge ITO. Unidym is sampling a transparent conductive film based on carbon nanotubes for touch panel displays and readying production capacity. CimaNanotech is similarly sampling its flexible film product based on self assemble of silver nano particles, for which Toray Advanced Films is the production coating partner.

Pushing MEMS to the nanoscale opens up new potential as well. “The advantages go beyond scaling,” says Caltech professor Michael Roukes, whose lab has been driving developments for the last 15 years. “The physics scales in a profound way.” This means MEMS-based detectors in an electronic nose can be made significantly more sensitive, as well as scaled down in size by about a million fold, compared to the existing state-of-the-art — and made with efficient wafer-scale processes.

Roukes’ lab and CEA-Leti are now routinely mass producing arrays of these nano MEMS sensors on 8-in. wafers, and recruiting corporate partners to their Alliance for Nanosystems VLSI for the final stage of developing the MEMS and CMOS processes to integrate them into practical low-cost gas-phase chemical sensors, to monitor toxic industrial gases and gas phase processes, or to analyze human breath to detect diseases.

The detectors are essentially arrays of nanoscale MEMS resonators — fancy versions of guitar strings — set within MEMS flow channels. The resonators are coated with a kind of chemical sponge that absorbs the target material, which changes the mass of the resonator. The gas is first sent through a chipscale version of a gas chromotograph process, to simplify the identification problem.

Though first markets will likely be military and industrial, the most interesting potential may be in medical diagnostics. “There are a few validated tests for detecting lung cancer and other diseases from the gases in the breath, enough to suggest this is a fertile area,” says Roukes, even though studies so far require large-scale lab instrumentation, so are hard to do. “The more easily and routinely this could be deployed, the more deeply it could be studied,” he notes.

All these structures can be made at 90nm, though 45nm would be preferable, says Roukes. He notes that with the device arrays successfully being produced at wafer-scale, current efforts are directed towards precursor systems including surface chemical functionalization and integration en masse with both MEMS flow channels and CMOS circuits for data post processing.

These companies will be among those discussing their latest developments in the program on Emerging Commercial Applications of Nanoelectronics at SEMICON West, July 14-16 in San Francisco. SRC Nano Electronics Initiative director Jeff Welser will also give a mini keynote on the interesting properties of graphene and spin wave transistors with potential to impact the semiconductor industry further out. The program is part of the Extreme Electronics series on emerging technology opportunities for the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. For details, see www.semiconwest.org.

This article appears in the Summer 2009 issue of Small Times.

July 8, 2009: Carl Zeiss has unveiled a new product in its Sigma line of field emission scanning electron microscopes (FE-SEM).

The “Sigma VP” adds variable pressure technology for exceptional imaging and analysis of non-conductive specimens. Like others in the Sigma line it features Carl Zeiss’ Gemini column. Its chamber includes provision for all WDS variants, and a geometry suitable for coplanar EDS and EBSD analysis. System control is handled by Zeiss’ SmartSEM software. It is compatible with accessories including Zeiss’ BSD and VPSE G3 detectors.


SIGMA VP FE-SEM. (Source: Carl Zeiss)

July 7, 2009: SouthWest Nanotechnologies, a developer of single-wall and specialty multiwall carbon nanotubes, is receiving $3M equity from Troy, MI-based Insight Technology Capital Partners LP to push product development, manufacturing, and marketing for both existing and new nanotube products.

Last year the company opened a new manufacturing facility in Norman, OK, increasing SWNT capacity 100× and lowering unit costs by 90%. The company also has an applications development center near Boston. Taking on Insight as an investor brings “extensive financial resources, broad industry knowledge and a successful track record of investing in advanced materials companies,” said company CEO Dave Arthur, in a statement.

“We welcome the opportunity to support SWeNT’s continued development as a world leader in carbon nanotechnology. Their leadership in product quality and performance, coupled with their proprietary scalable synthesis process, convinced us that SWeNT is the right vehicle for investment in this burgeoning area of materials technology,” stated Insight Principal Joe Nathan.

July 6, 2009: SEMATECH has accepted a Veeco Insight 3D atomic force microscope (AFM) to be put to use for non-destructive reference metrology for critical dimension (CD), overlay and contour, and 3D characterization of resist features in extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

The work will be done as part of the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative’s (ISMI) metrology program, located at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s (CNSE) Albany NanoTech Complex.

“One of the greatest metrology concerns for the 32-nanometer node and below is accuracy as it applies to CD and overlay measurements,” said John Allgair, SEMATECH metrology program manager, in a statement. “The InSight 3DAFM tool will address this concern and will be used as part of our overall CD metrology strategy to provide reference metrology for CD-SEMs and scatterometry [and] provide three-dimensional characterization of advanced EUVL resist structures.”

by Dr. Paula Doe, contributing editor

Though the MEMS market has remained essentially flat in 2008 and 2009, as plenty of new consumer and medical applications continued healthy growth, equipment demand is another story. The MEMS equipment market (new specialty MEMS tools) likely reached less than $200 million in 2008, down from $330 million in 2007, says Yole Développement CEO Jean-Christophe Eloy, and 2009 looks about the same, though visibility is very limited. However, “several specialty MEMS tool suppliers are adding capacity in light of strong order intake so far this year,” he notes. “This growth is driven by the diffusion of MEMS technologies into other markets like 3D ICs, image sensors, and new applications for nanoimprint.”

Suppliers also see potential in offering new approaches to improve tricky MEMS yields in manufacturing faster, and at lower cost, with solutions for quicker simulation, more practical dry etch, and smarter package inspection.

One option for getting those MEMS devices to yield would be to find design problems by simulation. Some fabs are using Coventor Inc.’s 3D virtual fabrication software to find design flaws or process problems before fabrication, reports Stephen Breit, Coventor VP of product development. Using voxels (cubic 3D equivalents of pixels) instead of traditional compute-intensive CAD-like solid modeling techniques — plus some elegant compression algorithms — allows fast modeling of the entire process sequence. The virtual prototype that results shows real engineering information on how the 2D layout will translate to a 3D device, revealing things like gaps in film coverage or cavities in underlying layers.

Users specify the parameters that impact the MEMS device geometry, like layer thickness, snowfall or conformal deposition, or etch rate ratios between different materials, for each step in the sequence. The modeler then applies a series of strictly geometric operations to generate a realistic virtual prototype of the device. The parameters must be experimentally calibrated, but the simpler modeling process can then simulate the entire fabrication sequence over a large part of the die within a few hours on a desktop computer.

X-Fab now regularly uses the tool throughout design and process development to validate MEMS designs before tape out, saving test wafers, and speeding time to yield.



Virtual fabrication of a MEMS accelerometer by the XFAB SOI process. (Source: Coventor)

More practical dry etch

Though wet etch remains the workhorse technology for etching away sacrificial layers to release the functional MEMS structures, at smaller geometries the surface tension effects of trapped moisture tend to stick down the released structures. Dry etch processes prevent this stiction, but they’ve yet to see wide adoption in production. Vapor phase HF etchers still require careful control of the condensation from the water used as a catalyst, and have been relatively low throughput, and the option of using XeF2 is extremely expensive.

Primaxx proposes to avoid stiction at lower cost with a batch vapor HF system that better keeps water out of the process. It uses low cost anhydrous HF, with low-water electronic grade alcohol for the catalyst, to minimize the H2O content of reagents going in, control H2O byproducts and keep them in gas phase, and draw the H2O away from the etch interface with the alcohol properties. The process also runs at minimal power at 45°C. CEO Paul Hammond says etch rates range from 0.05-5μm/minute, depending on oxide type, and with <10% variability within wafer, wafer to wafer, and batch to batch, on 25-wafer batches of 200mm wafers.

Air Products and Chemicals, meanwhile, is bringing down the cost of using XeF2 by reclaiming the xenon. Increasing demand for xenon for new applications in flat-panel displays and other electronics is pushing prices up, but the rare gas is also simply costly to extract and distill. It occurs naturally in air only in minute quantities of 87 parts per billion — so manufacturing typically requires some 220 watt-hours to extract one liter of Xe from air, then further purification by cryogenic distillation. This energy-intensive extraction process only makes sense on very large air plant, mostly associated with steel mills, and with the economic downturn they’ve curtailed production, further tightening supplies.

Air Products’ system for the fab reclaims the xenon by-product of the XeF2 etch process, then sends it back to an Air Products facility for manufacturing into more XeF2, explains commercial development manager Eugene Karawacki.

Automated package die inspection

Printed circuit board inspection tool supplier Vi Technology is entering the MEMS market by applying its automated optical inspection expertise to automating the inspection of MEMS dies before encapsulation. First customer for the new product started full volume production in mid-May.

The tool replaces traditional inspection by an operator with a microscope with a quick, two-step automated process. The first pass uses a laser to measure the tilt of each die in the package, to make sure products like inertial sensors are correctly seated so they work. It also measures the exact focal distance of the die in the package, adjusting to make sure the optical system can see from the top to the bottom of the dimensional MEMS device. The second pass comes back with a high-end camera and telecentric lens to take pictures of the die with different fields of view. After stitching the pictures together to reconstruct an image, it compares that to a reference image to identify any differences, and flags the ones that are actually real defects, down to 3μm in size. Both passes take about 2-5 seconds per die, depending on size and types of defects.

“This ensures that only the known good dies go on to the next step, usually encapsulation, therefore saving costs,” says product line manager David Richard. “It also enables for the first time a real tilt measurement, which is a key functional criterion for accelerometers and gyros, and no electrical test can measure this.”

These ideas are some that will be discussed in the MEMS programs at SEMICON West in San Francisco, July 14-16. Yole will present it latest market forecast for the supply chain, and leading European development foundries IMEC, CEA Leti, and Silex Microsystems will discuss their progress in using standard processes to cut development time and costs. The sessions are part of a series on key developments in disruptive semiconductor technologies featured this year in the Extreme Electronics program. See www.semiconwest.org for details.

This article appears in the Summer 2009 issue of Small Times.

by Debra Vogler, senior technical editor, Solid State Technology

July 5, 2009: In an ongoing bid to make jet and flash imprint lithography (J-FIL) the next-generation lithography choice over EUV, Molecular Imprints recently announced a partnership with Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) ,to provide Molecular Imprints with funding and related support for the development of a new mask replication platform designed to significantly lower imprint mask production costs — an important step in establishing the imprint technology infrastructure needed for volume-production applications.

The mask replication platform development program will utilize J-FIL technology to replicate master imprint masks at higher throughputs compared to traditional mask e-beam writers — resulting in reductions in total mask costs to levels well below the cost for optical photomasks used today, according to the company. The goal of the program is to develop mask replication technology that will be ready for commercial deployment for the 22nm half-pitch node.

“This partnership with DNP is a key component of our overall strategy to accelerate adoption of our J-FIL technology initially for advanced non-volatile memory production,” said Mark Melliar-Smith, CEO of Molecular Imprints. “Through its support of our mask replication development program, DNP is helping to ensure the availability of low-cost imprint masks to address the growing global demand within the semiconductor industry for high-resolution, low cost-of-ownership lithography.”

The lithography technology between the NVM and logic/MPU sectors — with the memory sector’s margins being highly challenged — is bifurcating, and after 193nm the choices in lithography will be based on two criteria: cost-of-ownership (COO) and resolution extensibility, Melliar-Smith told SST. “We believe imprint has a significant advantage over EUV in both cases.” Noting that memory manufacturers are the most cost-sensitive and the most resolution aggressive, Melliar-Smith believes that sector will be the first users of imprint lithography. “What happens after that in logic remains to be seen, but we’re convinced the memory manufacturers will choose imprint (over EUV).” He also cited imprint’s more aggressive resolution roadmap as compared to EUV as a key factor.


Patterned media template replicated with jet and flash imprint lithography (J-FIL). (Source: Molecular Imprints)

Molecular Imprints has a three-pronged approach to COO. First, the company cites its low costs for tooling (there is no track tool, no laser, no lenses, and no vacuum) and consumables (there is no laser maintenance, and it uses low power and minimal materials). Moreover, being able to use replication results in lower mask costs. There is also the potential for gaining higher throughput by clustering modules — the company is already using clustering on tools for the HDD sector).

Melliar-Smith is further convinced of imprint lithography’s advantage because standard optical lithography tools need to use more complex lenses and move to ever-shorter wavelength lasers to gain better resolution. The costs, therefore, become very large with each generation. “In the case of imprint, the resolution is determined by the imprint mask — so the COO of the tool is completely independent of the tool…the industry [has] never had this before.” — D.V.

July 3, 2009: Rushford Hypersonic LLC says it has applied its hypersonic plasma particle deposition (HPPD) coating process to its first “real-world” product: a drill bit that it says increased its lifetime by ~40×.

The company is utilizing technology developed at the U. of Minnesota, which hurls 2-20nm particles at Mach 8 speed; the force of impact causes a phase-change in the particle causes them to infiltrate and “stick” with a weld-like bond, vs. just coating the surface like other plasmaprocesses. The company claims the HPPD coating creates a super-hard (36-50GPa hardness rating) and fracture-tough (~6MPa) thin film carbide, and it also fills in holes and gaps left by other plasma processes.


High-resolution SEM photo of HPPD film. (Source: Rushford Hypersonic)

In the new tests, a 1/4-in. dia. jobber drill bit was coated with silicon carbide using the HPPD process, and dry-drilled through 1/2-in 304 stainless steel, with no cooling fluid or lubrication, for 238 holes, and then on 1-in. 304 stainless steel for another seven holes until finally faltering and failing due to shank fatigue. The same uncoated drill bit (out of the same lot) completed just six holes in the 1/2-in. stainless steel and failed on the 7th attempt.

Further testing will continue, but the company sees “an effortless transition” to applications including machine tools, mechanical parts, and implantable medical devices.