Posts Tagged ‘Coatings’
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June 28th, 2010
Nanoscale gold coatings made easy
Last week I got chatting to Sang-Kee Eah of The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. His team have just published this nice paper in Langmuir, the surface science journal. The crux of the research focuses on the identification of a simple, quick and clean way of synthesising gold nanoparticles, and then depositing them reproducibly on a range of surfaces. Check out the paper or Dr Eah’s press release for more details. Or you could even see the team demonstrating their technique on YouTube! -
May 7th, 2010
Golden plastic
We’ve picked up on this interesting press release from the Queensland University of Technology, which is entitled ‘Gold nanoparticles enrich every day products’. The release details the work of Adrian Fuchs, a researcher in the department, who has just completed his PhD developing a way to disperse gold nanoparticles evenly through plastic. Such work has broad potential application, especially in fields such as catalysis, drug delivery, and novel coatings.
For a more in depth look at this work, see this recent publication in the journal Polymer
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July 22nd, 2009
The indestructible mobile
One of the quirky stories in the UK newspapers over the last few days has been this piece about the new ‘indestructible’ phone from Sonim. For £250 you get a device that will withstand temperatures of -20 Celsius, can be submerged in water and will survive being dropped on to concrete from a height of 6ft. Pretty impressive.
This story got me thinking about the use of gold in mobile phones. Gold is used in number of components in mobiles/cell phones, including as a coating material on the contacts (battery charging area, SIM contacts etc) and in the form of gold bonding wire in the device’s chips. In each case, there are nominally lower cost alternative materials available, but gold remains the material of choice. Why? Well, as the Sonim phone admirably demonstrates, reliability is a key consumer requirement and materials don’t come more reliable than gold. You don’t want a chip to fail or a contact to be unreliable, so you use gold to perform key functions in the product. That’s why I’d be amazed in the Sonim phone didn’t contain gold.
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July 7th, 2009
40th Anniversary of the Moon landings
Courtesy of NASA
Forty years ago this month the Apollo moon landing was completed and a man was on the moon. It seems a good time to remind ourselves of the critical role gold played in this project - the very visual use of a gold foil to protect the landing craft from solar radiation - a detailed explanation of the technical properties of gold that make it critical in these applications is given by this research paper in Gold Bulletin by Langley.
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June 4th, 2009
Killing off bugs with gold…….
Silver has received much publicity over its anti-bacterial properties and a myriad of commercial applications are based on these including coatings for catheters and anti-odour socks and clothing. It is well known that gold also has anti-bacterial properties but to date these have not received the same attention. However two items have come to my attention this week that show the future is potentially bright for gold too in this application sector.
Firstly, I note the publication of a new patent, WO 2009/046081 A2, on the 9th April from 3M Inc, titled “Process for limiting the growth of microrgansims”. This is based on their PVD deposition technology used in the manufacture of gold catalysts in applications such as gas masks. In this patent, they deposit fine nanoscale gold of 5nm size or less onto nanoparticulate titanium dioxide by their PVD process to produce a potent antimicrobial material. The resulting material can be effective against a variety of micro-organisms such as bacteria in the presence of other biological material (e.g. protein) and in a variety of different environments and lighting conditions. Photocatalytic activity is also claimed. This process provides a means for disinfecting a surface. Maybe we will learn more of this invention on the 3M stand at GOLD 2009 in Heidelberg next month?
The second item of interest is research carried out at Syracuse University , where Yan-Yeuk Luk, professor of chemistry, and Dacheng Ren, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, have developed a new surface that resists biofilm growth, a development that could lead to improved medical implants and prevention of biofouling. In their research they found that a thin 20nm gold film deposited on a glass slide could be surface treated to produce a surface on which the growth of bacteria could be confined to 2-dimensions. Important differences in the way mammalian cells and bacteria adhere to the surface were discovered too. We shall be following this research up. Watch for more information at a later date.
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May 18th, 2009
Gold plating on difficult substrates
An example of the engineering components that require precision optical gold coatings
The story of Epner Technologies is a fascinating one. Founded in 1910 it is now one of the world’s leading hi-tech gold plating companies. The company specialises and supplies the US standards body NIST with the standard infrared reflective material.
The company has just announced a new process for achieving blister-free gold plating on some of the more unusual or difficult metals to plate like Titanium, Molybdenum, Tungsten, Magnesium. This allows them to withstand high brazing or soldering temperatures, for applications including coatings for optical and reflective uses in military, defense, aerospace, and medical projects. See here for more….
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March 13th, 2009
Nanogold improves antimicrobial polymers
Yesterday I visited Professors Michael Wilson and Ivan Parkin of University College London (UCL). In the last few months they have published some really ground-breaking work that has the potential to open up a whole new field of application for gold.The work of these researchers in Biomaterials has shown that 2 nanometre gold particles significantly enhance the ability of methylene blue (a light-activated antimicrobial agent) to kill bacteria like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
Healthcare related infections like MRSA are an increasing problem and there is a huge amount of interest in developing new technologies that can prevent cross-infection and contamination. This work could have real potential in all sorts of healthcare related applications including catheters, surface coatings in hospitals and wound treatments.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
Chris Corti
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