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A French Technology Transfer Office offers a new device to manufacture customised sintered materials

Country of Origin: France
Reference Number: TOFR20180417001
Publication Date: 23 April 2018

Summary

A French Technology Transfer Office offers a new device to produce customised sintered materials, as nanocomposites, ceramics linked to additive manufacturing.
This technology could be useful for integrating high added value materials in various domains such as power electronics, structural materials, aeronautics,... 
This TTO is looking for a company which could be interested in acquiring and industrializing the technology with a licence agreement or a technical cooperation agreement.

Description

The French Technology Transfer Office (TTO) is acting on behalf of an established public laboratory in the Paris region.



Nowadays, materials with specific properties such as lightness, ultra-hardness,...are required more and more often. Linked to the additive manufacturing, innovative processes as sintering allow the development of new kinds of polymers, composites, metals and ceramics.



Nevertheless, current sintering processes meet many difficulties in terms of homogenization and grain growth control, impacting materials performance and lifetime. 

Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) offers high potential solutions to address those issues but the existing machines still represent significant cost and size (around a few m2).

The technology developed by the French laboratory concerns a patented device with new architecture and components using SPS techniques. SPS compacts material powders by very strong pressure with short impulses of electric current of strong intensity. The device can sinter under very high pressure, up to 5 GPa (while current SPS machine hardly go-beyond the MPa : 5 thousand times less powerful).

SPS machines on the market have a significant size (around a few m2), while this device is rather small (0,05 m2). Its small size is compatible with plugging to high-energy beam lines in order to do material characterization or in situ monitoring.



This new technology could be useful for various domains such as power electronics, structural materials, biomaterials, aeronautics and aerospace.

This new technology is useful:

-to produce many kinds of materials such as ceramics, composites, metals by sintering small and medium size materials

-to synthesize and characterize functionalized materials (superconductor, piezoelectric)



The French TTO is looking for a partner to use the presented technology through license agreement.

In addition, the French TTO is looking for a technical partner who could be interested in participating in a project for further developing the technology.

Advantages and Innovations

The current sintering devices are cumbersome and complicated to use. A lack of understanding of the phenomenon involved during synthesis is also problematic.

This device guarantees materials quality and process monitoring and is user-friendly as well.



Furthermore, this new device is portable and can be installed on a table with its small size (24cm*24cm*84cm).

It can also be disassembled easily for transport which reinforces its portable status.

This technology is also useful to sinter ultra-hard (diamond).

Stage Of Development

Prototype available for demonstration

Stage Of Development Comment

A functional prototype has been developed.

Requested partner

The French TTO is looking for a license agreement or a technical cooperation agreement with industrial companies.



License agreement: the potential industrial partner should be interested in negotiating a license agreement in order to commercialize a new machine using the patented device.



Technical cooperation agreement: the potential industrial partner should be interested in removing technological barriers because at very high pressure (5GPa), the sintered volumes of ceramic are limited to a 8 mm diameter sample. Therefore increasing this volume could be a considerable technical challenge.



The partner sought could be, for example, a manufacturer involved in the synthesis of materials with high added value (zirconium,…).