Maxima Sciences partners with GP Plasma to produce R&D benchtop ALD system for 3D geometries

Jake, you recently partnered with GP Plasma to have them build your design of an ALD system, what made you choose GP Plasma?

I needed a partner I could trust, and the experience and reputation of the team and my long-standing connection with Frank Papa made it an easy choice.

What problem does the maxima ALD system solve?

Atomic layer deposition is a fast-growing technology with many novel uses and applications still being discovered. Typically, most lab systems are expensive to have custom built and generally off the shelf units are designed for small flat substrates.

I designed a system with a small footprint, economical and applicable to conformal coating of 3D geometries to make it suitable for commercial/industrial R&D labs to allow them to de-risk the technology for new applications.

Where do you see opportunity of ALD technologies being applied?

Having the ability to coat aspect ratios as high as 5000:1 makes ALD the technology of choice when conformal coating is required. Particularly when corrosion resistance, or H2O and O2 barrier layers are required, which can be achieved with coatings on the order of 15-25 nanometers. This also makes it useful as a sealing layer over other decorative coatings that suffer from pinholes that may lead to early corrosion failure.

Coating of polymers is an excellent application area, and for anti-corrosion coatings of Metal additive manufactured parts that can be both complex in geometry with high surface porosity. ALD conformally fills these pores.

Jake Bertrand consults for Maxima Sciences LLC from Montgomery, OH, USA.

https://max-sci.com/

Image courtesy of https://www.atomiclimits.com/imagebase/