Showing posts with label powder coating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label powder coating. Show all posts

Friday, October 8, 2021

Forge Nano Installs Prometheus™ Powder Atomic Layer Deposition (PALD) equipment at Air Liquide's Tokyo Innovation Campus

Forge Nano, a global leader in surface engineering with atomic layer deposition (ALD) sells the top-of-the-line Prometheus™ development system. Air Liquide is using the system to validate applications for ALD-enabled powders in Japan and Globally.

DENVER and YOKOSUKA, Japan, Oct. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Forge Nano, a Denver-based advanced materials equipment company, has installed one of their flagship Prometheus™ powder ALD (PALD) systems at Air Liquide Japan Ltd.'s Tokyo Innovation Campus. The Prometheus™ research and development system is being used by Air Liquide to validate ALD precursor chemicals for PALD applications for a variety of applications including battery materials for electric vehicles and electronic materials for consumer devices. Air Liquide, an investor in Forge Nano, is using the Prometheus™ system to perform various proofs-of-concept for subsequent scale-up at customer facilities using Forge Nano's commercial scale equipment.



Forge Nano Prometheus ALD Tool. Atomic Layer Deposition Equipment

"Forge Nano values Air Liquide as a key strategic investor and partner in various established markets. We're excited to provide them with a research system to accelerate adoption of PALD technology in Japan and globally for new applications. Once proofs of concept are completed by Air Liquide, we will provide end customers with commercial scale PALD equipment," Dr. Daniel Higgs, Director Product Management.

"Forge Nano is a recognized leader in the development and industrialization of cutting-edge powder-ALD processes. As the global leading ALD precursors "designer" and supplier, we are excited to install a Prometheus PALD system to support our discovery and scale-up of new ALD applications, together with our worldwide customers and partners," Nicolas Blasco, Air Liquide Advanced Materials, Global Director, Emerging Markets.

Prometheus™ PALD system:
The Prometheus™ PALD system is Forge Nano's flagship R&D system for ALD on powders. It incorporates over 20 years of powder ALD know-how and was designed for ease of use, research flexibility, and quality of coatings. With advanced powder fluidization technology and up to 8 ALD chemical precursor lines, Prometheus™ is the most capable powder ALD system on the market.

Prometheus features:
  • 1mL – 600ml (~1kg) of powder per batch.
  • Proprietary fluidization technology enables uniform fluidization and deposition
  • Up to 8 ALD chemical precursors connection enable a multitude of coatings
  • Interchangeable reactor bodies ensure precise coating of various batch sizes
  • Inert isolation and handling capabilities of air-sensitive powders
Forge Nano's team of ALD experts guide our customers through the entire process, making ALD feasible for nearly any industry. Forge's commercial systems for ALD on powders include Lithos™, Circe™, Morpheus™, while their systems for ALD on wafers/objects include Theia™, Apollo™, and Helios™.

About Forge Nano:
Based in Denver, CO., Forge Nano is a global leader in surface engineering and precision nano-coating technology, using Atomic Layer Deposition. Forge Nano's proprietary technology and manufacturing processes make angstrom-thick coatings fast, affordable and commercially viable for a wide range of materials, applications and industries. Forge Nano's suite of ALD and PALD products and services cover the full spectrum from lab-scale tools to commercial-scale manufacturing systems.
For more information visit www.ForgeNano.com

About Air Liquide Advanced Materials:
A world leader in gases, technologies and services for Industry and Health, Air Liquide is present in 78 countries with approximately 64,500 employees and serves more than 3.8 million customers and patients. Air Liquide Advanced Materials (ALAM) is transforming the science of electronics and technology. We innovate with atomic scale engineering to open up countless new possibilities in how the world lives, works and connects. Today, our ALOHA™ and Voltaix® products are critical to the manufacture of the newest computer chips required for Big Data and the Internet of Things.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Norwegian Morrow Batteries and Dutch startup Delft IMP have signed a JDA for ALD improved batteries

Morrow Batteries explores new technology with Dutch startup-company Morrow Batteries and Delft IMP have agreed to explore a joint collaboration in using ultra-thin coating technologies to produce lower cost and more sustainable batteries. Norway-based Morrow Batteries and Dutch-based startup Delft IMP have agreed to investigate the joint development of new improved batteries. The technology used is based on atomic layer deposition (ALD).


“We are applying ultra thin coatings on powder material and can produce these at scale with a unique technology originating from Delft University of Technology.” said Dr. Roderik Colen, CEO of Delft IMP. “It is a matter of time before breakthrough developments using ultra thin coatings become commercially available. The development of Morrow Industrialization Centre (MIC) provides us with a unique opportunity to demonstrate this at scale.”

Press release: LINK

Morrow Batteries AS: LINK

Morrow Industrialization Centre (MIC) will include a pilot manufacturing line and a R&D centre. We aim to start building MIC in 2022 and be operational in 2023.

Morrow Giga Factory will be a giga-scale battery cell manufacturing factory. We are currently evaluating alternative locations and expect to take a decision by the end of 2020. We aim to start cell manufacturing in our giga-scale battery cell factory by the end of 2024.

Delft IMP: LINK

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Forge Nano and Argonne improve yield in propylene manufacturing by ALD coating

Propylene, a precursor for commodity chemicals and plastics, is produced by propane dehydrogenation (PDH). In a PDH process, propane is selectively dehydrogenated to propylene. Production capacity via PDH is slated to grow rapidly over the next several years. The single feed/single product feature is one of the most attractive aspects of PDH, especially for propylene derivative producers looking to back-integrate for a secure and cost-effective source of propylene (IHS Markit Report LINK). 

Despite its simple chemistry, industrial implementation of PDH is very complicated owing to side reactions such as: 
  • deep dehydrogenation
  • hydrogenolysis
  • cracking
  • polymerization
  • coke formation.
According to a recent publication by Forge Nano and Argonne National Lab, an increase in PDH yield via added catalyst activity, lifetime, or selectivity represents significant energy and economic savings. 

The researchers has demonstrated that by using Pt dispersed on Al2O3 extrudate supports as a commercially relevant model system and by using atomic layer deposition (ALD) metal oxide overcoats, the metal-active sites can be tailored to increase PDH yield and selectivity. 

In the study they investigate the interplay of Pt loading, ALD overcoat thickness, and Al2O3 support surface area on PDH activity, selectivity, and catalyst stability. 

They were able to show that applying a 6–8 Å thick layer of Al2O3 on low-surface area Al2O3 supports of ∼90 m2/g surface area yields the optimal combination of stability and activity, while increasing propylene selectivity from 91 to 96%. Please find further details in the paper linked below.

Catalyst preparation method, Graphical abstract (https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.0c03391)


Atomic Layer Deposition Overcoating Improves Catalyst Selectivity and Longevity in Propane Dehydrogenation
Zheng Lu, Ryon W. Tracy, M. Leigh Abrams, Natalie L. Nicholls, Paul T. Barger, Tao Li, Peter C. Stair,
Arrelaine A. Dameron, Christopher P. Nicholas, and Christopher L. Marshall

ACS Catal. 2020, 10, XXX, 13957–13967
Publication Date:November 16, 2020

https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.0c03391

Thursday, May 21, 2020

PALD2020 Sundqvist - Roating Drum ALD and LPCVD

The Americans forgot that we have a holiday today and in Germany celebrate something called Männertag (see link below). For all you Europeans that may have fallen asleep after midnight or Germans that had one too many beers - here my presentation upfront at the PALD Summit:


Monday, January 20, 2020

Forge Nano Webinar - Lab Scale ALD on powders with PROMETHEUS

Forge Nano has started to provide free ALD Webinars given live as well as playback thru their website: LINK

FREE ALD Webinar - Lab Scale ALD on powders with PROMETHEUS
  • Join the ALD experts at Forge Nano for a free webinar on Jan. 30th @ 10:00am MST.
  • Join us as our experts demonstrate our Lab-Scale ALD tool- PROMETHEUS.
  • Get an up-close and personal look at the features and functionality of PROMETHEUS.


PROMETHEUS is a Lab-Scale, Particle ALD research tool like no other. Featuring a simple to use interface, ergonomic and intuitive design, and various reactor sizes and configurations.

Previous Webinar - ALD Basics – ALD on powders (LINK)












Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Argonne National Laboratory Installs Forge Nano’s Prometheus ALD tool to enable next gen ALD research and innovation.

[Press release, Forge Nano, LINK] LOUISVILLE, CO., October 2019 — Delivery and installation of Forge Nano’s industry leading, lab-scale ALD tool- Prometheus has been completed.

Forge Nano’s Prometheus tool is a lab-scale R&D tool designed to make ALD research approachable and affordable. The Prometheus series of ALD tools have been designed to be the world’s most robust, flexible, and economical ALD tools available. Designed with the lab environment in mind, applying nanoscale encapsulating coatings on milligrams to kilograms of powders has never been more attainable. It can also be used to coat small objects.

The Prometheus system accommodates up to 8 precursors, including basic delivery and low vapor pressure delivery draw systems to handle gas, liquid, and solid precursor recipes with ease. (www.foregnano.com)

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

ALD & CVD Surface Conformal Powder Coating for Li-Batteries, Hard metals, Cermaics, 3D-Printing and any other Powder Application

The Thin-Film Technologies Group of Fraunhofer IKTS has extended its expertise and service portfolio into the field of thin-film deposition on particles and powders. Using the available equipment and deposition technology, powder quantities of up to 100 g can now be coated using conformal ALD and CVD processes. 

Figure 1 - Different grades of ALD and CVD coated hard metal powder.
The recent research and development has focused on conformal functional layers on powder materials for applications for Li-ion batteries (LMNO – LiNi0,5Mn1,5O4 powder), as well as applications in hardmetal tool manufacturing. The group has developed novel ultrathin barrier layers and layer systems for LNMO powders and other hygroscopic and easily oxidizing materials, e.g. metal powders and hardmetal powders such as tungsten carbide (WC). 

Figure 2 - Tungsten carbide powder coated conformally with TiN.
The first results for the coating of tungsten carbide powder with titanium nitride show that it is possible to produce coatings with excellent surface conformality using both ALD and CVD techniques (Figure 2). With a 10 to 50 nm thin TiN coating on tungsten carbide powder, new types of polycrystalline tungsten carbide based on polycrystalline WC particles can be produced for various applications in the tooling industry. As these hardmetals are being manufactured, a TiN barrier layer can prevent the molten cobalt from penetrating into the polycrystal and dissolving it. This results in extraordinarily high hardness and good fracture toughness. A broad range of TiN ALD- and CVD-coated powder is currently being investigated for their sintering processing behavior and material properties, such as hardness and rupture strength. 

Figure 3 - Al2O3-coated LMNO powder.
In a second project, LMNO powders for Li-ion batteries were coated with an extremely thin Al2O3 coating (Figure 3). This layer improves the interface with the electrolyte, which in combination with the high-voltage material LNMO prevents degradation of the electrolyte. The aim is to benefit both the battery cell’s cycle stability and performance. The coated powders are currently being characterized and show promising results. 
 
Figure 4 - LNMO powder in the drum reactor. After processing, the powder character is retained without particle agglomeration.
When coating powders with low density or low weight, the coating process was frequently marred by high powder losses. By optimizing the ALD pulse sequences and the reactor geometry, it is now possible to achieve a powder yield of more than 95 % for Al2O3 coatings in the layer thickness range of 1 to 20 nm. The agglomeration of the particles could also be avoided through rotation (Figure 4).

The amazing results so far indicate that in the case of TiN it is possible to coat many powder types conformally by both in ALD and CVD mode. Please check out some of the videos below!


Friday, September 25, 2015

Powder Coating Industries Choose Picosun's ALD Solutions

Picosun Oy, leading supplier of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) thin film coating solutions for industrial manufacturing, reports delivery of multiple powder coating ALD systems to key production customers.


Picosun offers powder coating solutions for both industry and R&D. Our POCA™ 300 powder coating cartridge allows processing of large batches of materials and it can be directly integrated into the PICOSUN™ P-300 production-scale reactor frame. For smaller material volumes, our POCA™ 200 powder coating cartridge integrated into a PICOSUN™ R-series tool is a compact, versatile, and cost-efficient solution for top quality powder materials research. Picosun’s novel, innovative PICOVIBE™ feature improves the powder coating process even further by enhancing the distribution of the precursor vapors inside the powder batch, resulting in uniform film formation on every particle.
 
Surface modification of powder materials is a central requirement in various industry segments. Catalysts, novel battery materials, light-emitting phosphors, and medical substances are prime examples where Picosun's ALD technology enables completely new products or creates unparalleled added value to existing ones. Picosun's patented, highly successful POCA™ powder coating product family covers both research and pilot production tools and systems optimized for large scale batch manufacturing, all designed solely based on the requirements of the ALD method. All POCA™ systems can be equipped with Picosun's innovative Picovibe™ mechanism for optimal formation of highest quality ALD film throughout the batch.

"Staying constantly on the top of current and coming industrial trends is one of the cornerstones of Picosun's success. Functionalization of powder materials with ALD is one of our key application areas, and the market is huge. We are happy to see that the investment we have placed in development and optimization of our powder processing solutions now pays itself back in the form of repeat sales of our powder coating tools to our key industry customers, realizing their most advanced products in e.g. lighting device and medical industries," states Juhana Kostamo, Managing Director of Picosun.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Picosun Summer ALD News

Well in time for the AVS ALD 2015 International Confernce in Portland USA, Picosun releases Summer News 2015. The magazine is available online with some great stories and news and can be downloaded here and the main headlines you can see below: 


Picosun’s leading vacuum batch options win more market in MEMS, LED, and III-V
manufacturing

MEMS, LEDs, and other III-V compound semiconductor devices are central market segments for Picosun’s production ALD technology. In order to maintain the spearheading position as the solutions provider to these manufacturers, Picosun has built an extensive range of automatic vacuum batch sample handling systems optimized for the requirements of the above mentioned industries. Two examples are shown below, the PICOPLATFORM™ vacuum cluster system and the PICOSUN™ P-300 Pro reactor equipped with the batch flipping mechanism


Versatile, multifunctional, high throughput PICOPLATFORM™ vacuum cluster systems have been a solid success since their launch. The substrate handling system of the PICOPLATFORM™ tool is based on Brooks MX™- or Marathon™ -series vacuum robot clustering units.


The PICOSUN™ P-300 Pro reactor equipped with the batch flipping mechanism is optimal for e.g. MEMS manufacturing line, where the most part of the processing happens in horizontal geometry, in contrast to the vertical position required for the wafers in the ALD reactor. The flipping system picks the wafers from the loading cassette one by one and flips them into vertical position in the wafer holder for the ALD process step. During the unloading step, the wafers are again flipped back to horizontal position in the receiving cassette. Currently, the flipping system is optimized for handling a cassette of 25 pcs of 200 mm wafers.

Picosun’s Asian expansion continues in Taiwan

Picosun and National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) have established a Joint Industrial ALD Research Laboratory at the premises of NCTU’s X-Photonics Interdisciplinary Center in Hsinchu City, Taiwan.

 
The signing ceremony of the Joint Industrial ALD Research Laboratory. From left to right: ATOM SEMICON Vice President Mr. Bob Lin; CEO of Picosun Asia Pte. Ltd. and Applications Director of Picosun Oy, Dr. Wei-Min Li; Vice President for Research and Development of NCTU, Prof. Edward-Yi Chang; Chairman of the Board and CEO of Picosun Oy, Mr. Kustaa Poutiainen; Secretary General of NCTU, Prof. Hsin-Tien Chiu; and Associate Vice President, Office of International Affairs and Distinguished Professor, Department of Photonics and Institute of Electro-optical Engineering, Prof. Hao-Chung Kuo.

Large scale powder ALD enabled with POCA™ 300 and Picovibe™ technologies from Picosun

Following the recent news of Swedish Nanexa using ALD to coat medically active particles for precise drug delivery (PharmaShell® is a completely new drug delivery system) it is interesting to see that Picosun also offers a full scale production unit through the POCA and Picovibe technologies.


Picosun’s POCA™ 300 powder coating system allows ALD processing of large powder batches utilizing the company’s industry-standard PICOSUN™ P-300 reactor design.

Picosun extends ALD solutions portfolio for mechanical 3D part protection 

The unmatched quality of the ALD films and the ALD method’s ability to cover reliably and uniformly even the tiniest surface details make it an ideal technique for protective surface treatments for macroscopic 3D objects. Picosun’s production-proven ALD technology already enables anti-tarnish and decorative coatings on coins, watches, and jewelry parts, offering totally new, improved, environmentally friendly, and cost-efficient alternative to traditional surface protection methods. Now, the solutions portfolio has been extended to yet new product categories such as printed circuit boards (PCBs), medical implants, and, as an example of heavier machinery, engine, pump, and compressor parts.


Picosun’s production-proven ALD coating solutions are already in use in medical implant manufacturing. ALD is an ideal method for bioactive surface functionalization of titanium alloy dental implants, metal parts of artificial hips, and other implantable surgical devices, for improved patient safety and longer lifetime of the devic

Customer interviews:

  • Prof. Hao-Chung Kuo, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
  • Dr. Giuliana Impellizzeri, National Research Council, Catania, Italy
  • Dr. Jonas Sundqvist, Lund University, Sweden

Sunday, September 14, 2014

NEI Corporation and PneumatiCoat Tech. sign JDA to develop Spatial ALD for Lithium-ion Batteries

As reported by NEI Corporation: NEI Corporation and PneumatiCoat Technologies Sign Agreement to Jointly Develop and Market New Materials for Lithium-ion Batteries:

NEI Corporation has been a long trusted source for customized cathode and anode materials used in lithium batteries. The company specializes in developing new compositions and particle morphologies, including nanoscale particle engineering. NEI also has extensive battery research and characterization facility, which includes multi-channel cell testers. PneumatiCoat Technologies is a pioneer in autonomous coating systems that allow for high-rate manufacturing of ALD protected particles used in batteries and related energy storage devices. The ALD platform was originally developed in Europe, and PCT is now facilitating the transition of the ALD platform from slow and expensive to economical, robust and industrially-viable.
 

PCT’s Turn-key Systems for Li-ion Battery Materials "PneumatiCoat System Transforms Powder Flow to Rate Limiting Step" using Spatial ALD Technology.
 
The NEI-PCT agreement allows customers access to ALD coatings on a variety of battery material compositions, including mixed metal oxides (Lithium Manganese Nickel Oxide - LMNO, NMC, LMO, NCA); phosphates, silicates, titanates, sulfides, graphite and silicon-based active materials. Customers have the flexibility to not only investigate new compositions and chemistries, but also consider the use of different ALD coatings, both passive and lithium-ion conducting. The NEI-PCT relationship provides customers with access to the technology cost-effectively.
 
  
More detailed information on the ALD technology can be found in this PDF-presentation.
 
About PneumatiCoat Technologies LLC:

PneumatiCoat Technologies is the exclusive manufacturer of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) systems that operate using the low-cost spatial ALD production process, a must-have for integrating surface-customized materials into differentiated products in a cost-effective manner. The powder-on-demand system uses the principles of lean manufacturing to produce ALD-coated particles and objects. PCT provides services, systems, and products to support product customization and continuous improvement initiatives across a wide array of industries, and its innovative IP portfolio also includes exclusive rights to develop and manufacture ALD-enabled battery materials. PCT uses the trade name PICOSHIELD™.