Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Sunday, March 15, 2020
ISRO and ARCI offer micro-arc oxidation coating technologies
Both ISRO and ARCI are offering technologies for ‘micro arc oxidation’ coating, which has immense industrial applications. ISRO offers MAO for magnesium and its alloys; ARCI on several metals.
The traditional methods for coating are susceptible to corrosion and wear off easily. They are also not scratch-resistant. MAO coated metals are pretty hard, comparable to stainless steel. MAO, also known as plasma electrolytic oxidation, (or spark anodization) is a surface treatment technique which uses a high voltage, high current process to obtain a hard, corrosion resistant oxide coating surface of the metal.
ISRO says its technology will give hard, ceramic-like coating with superior corrosion resistant and abrasion and wear resistant properties. No pre-cleaning of the component is required and thickness and hardness can be adjusted.
MAO coatings find application in the various engineering industry for components, which require corrosion resistant and very high wear resistant surface such as pistons, cylinders, and hydraulic gear and for variety of components in aerospace industry. These coatings also improve the tribological properties of the components. These coating are also used in various components of automobile industries to improve their durability, corrosion resistance and heat radiation characteristics. It also offers high heat resistance. Components coated with thick MAO film can withstand unusually high temperature for a short duration. Also, the high insulation value of coating makes it useful in developing a dielectric layer with a breakdown strength of about 25 -30 V/micron thick coating. This coating is also used in Mobile phones and laptop casing.
Similarly, ARCI also promises uniform, dense, hard and thick coatings; Superior coating properties and performance compared to other conventional acid-based processes like anodizing and hard anodizing; The technique also offers excellent tribological properties and corrosion resistance. ARCI’s has not only developed the technology but also invented an apparatus for carrying out the process.
There is a lot of scientific material on ARCI’s website about this.
If you find this post useful, please do like it, share it with others.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
ISRO and ARCI offer micro-arc oxidation coating technologies
Both ISRO and ARCI are offering technologies for ‘micro arc oxidation’ coating, which has immense industrial applications. ISRO offers MAO for magnesium and its alloys; ARCI on several metals.
The traditional methods for coating are susceptible to corrosion and wear off easily. They are also not scratch-resistant. MAO coated metals are pretty hard, comparable to stainless steel. MAO, also known as plasma electrolytic oxidation, (or spark anodization) is a surface treatment technique which uses a high voltage, high current process to obtain a hard, corrosion resistant oxide coating surface of the metal.
ISRO says its technology will give hard, ceramic-like coating with superior corrosion resistant and abrasion and wear resistant properties. No pre-cleaning of the component is required and thickness and hardness can be adjusted.
MAO coatings find application in the various engineering industry for components, which require corrosion resistant and very high wear resistant surface such as pistons, cylinders, and hydraulic gear and for variety of components in aerospace industry. These coatings also improve the tribological properties of the components. These coating are also used in various components of automobile industries to improve their durability, corrosion resistance and heat radiation characteristics. It also offers high heat resistance. Components coated with thick MAO film can withstand unusually high temperature for a short duration.
Also, the high insulation value of coating makes it useful in developing a dielectric layer with a breakdown strength of about 25 -30 V/micron thick coating. This coating is also used in Mobile phones and laptop casing.
Similarly, ARCI also promises uniform, dense, hard and thick coatings; Superior coating properties and performance compared to other conventional acid-based processes like anodizing and hard anodizing; The technique also offers excellent tribological properties and corrosion resistance. ARCI’s has not only developed the technology but also invented an apparatus for carrying out the process.
There is a lot of scientific material on ARCI’s website about this.
If you find this post useful, please do like it, share it with others.
ARCI offers sol-gel based technologies for hard coating plastics and carbon epoxy composites
The International Advanced Research Center for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), which is based in Hyderabad, has invented a method for giving plastics a transparent coat of hard material. Such hard-coated plastics find application in area such as helicopters, automobile windshields and windows, aircraft canopies, helmet visors and road markers.
ARCI’s method is an improvement over the existing conventional coating techniques such as spraying, dipping and spinning. This one is based on sol-gel method. Beauty is, these hard-coated plastics are scratch-proof.
“Optically transparent coatings with excellent adhesion on polymer surfaces which can be increased by plasma surface pretreatment,” says ARCI. These coatings have superior hardness and also possess high scratch & abrasion resistance, it says.
Similarly, ARCI has sol-gel coating technology for carbon epoxy composites. New technologies like Ultraviolet radiation curing and plasma surface pretreatment gives enhanced coating functionalities; Entire coating technology is amenable to scale-up.
In this case, ARCI has found that the coats do not wet (retention of hydrophobicity) even after 1,000 cycles of abrasion under 1kg of load. “Low temperature curing conditions were optimized to yield maximum hydrophobicity and abrasion resistance of coatings,” says ARCI
The institute has put up some excellent scientific material on its website. Do check out https://www.arci.res.in/licensing-opportunities#3.
Those interested in buying this technology from ARCI may do so here: https://www.arci.res.in/centres-ctatic-interested-in-collaborating
If you find this post useful, please do share it.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
BARC develops Nitric oxide releasing wound dressing
Here is a technology of high practical use from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. The technology is for producing wound dressings that release Nitric oxide, which helps in faster healing.
Nitric oxide plays an important role in healing of wounds. Delay in wound healing, apart from causing distress to the injured, also results in infection. Some people, especially those with diabetes, do not produce enough
Nitric oxide by themselves, and they suffer. But Nitric oxide could be supplied from the dressing.
BARC’s wound dressing has shown excellent anti-bacterial and anti-fungal activity. “The dressing promotes angiogenesis, which helps in graft acceptance in the wound-bed,” says BARC. In addition, the dressing contains a collagen, which is a protein that gives tensile strength to the skin and hence plays a key role in wound healing. It attracts cells such as fibroblasts and keratinocytes to the wound, encourages angiogenesis and re-epithelialization. The collagen provides a natural scaffold or substrate for new tissue growth.
The dressing is useful for chronic infected wounds and non-healing wounds such as diabetic foot, pressure ulcer, venous stasis wound, etc., can be stored at ambient temperature and humidity conditions for two years and is inexpensive to manufacture. It is also useful in skin graft surgery.
For further details, contact:
Head
Technology Transfer and Collaboration Division
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,
Trombay, Mumbai 400 –085
CECRI makes progress with Sodium-ion cells
Researchers Dr A S Prakash and Dr K Ramesha at the Central Electro Chemical Research Institute (CECRI) have made considerable progress in their development of a Sodium-ion cell.
Starting with 200 mAH capacity (3.6V), they have slowly raised the capacity to 700 mAH. Their target is to reach 1 AH, which they are confident of achieving soon. They know what is to be done, they know how to do it, but the issue is with fabrication of materials—cathode, anode, electrolyte and separator. They are not yet revealing what these materials are, but they say all these have to be manufactured in-house, since the materials are not readily available in the market. There are, of course, many teething problems, but the researchers are confident of tackling them. Prakash says that they could achieve their milestone of 1 AH any time—it could be in a month, or go up to six months. But never mind, it is a cinch.
These Sodium-ion cells, being of low energy density and heavier—Lithium-ion scores over Sodium-ion on both these counts—and so they can be used in non-automotive applications, such as electronic devices. Still, CECRI is almost on par with any other research institution in the world in Sodium-ion cell research and hence quite in the vanguard of things.
CECRI is open to sponsored research offers. Already a clutch of small and medium companies have approached the institute with offers, which are being evaluated. There is still scope for more collaborations.
Interested parties may get in touch with:
Dr. A S Prakash
Principal Scientist
CECRI, Taramani Campus
Chennai
prakash@cecri.res.in
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