Xtalic's new technology was developed at MIT in the laboratory of Professor Christopher Schuh, holder of the Salapatas Associate Professorship of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Metal properties are determined by a number of factors including composition and structure. Traditionally metal properties have been engineered through alloying metals together to get a desirable mix of properties including strength, toughness and corrosion and wear resistance. Another powerful determinant in properties is crystal size and structure, but historically control of crystal formation in thin layers of metal has not been practical.
Crystal or grain size has an important effect on properties. Professor Schuh’s team at MIT found and patented a unique, low cost method for controlling crystal formation and this set of ideas, now licensed exclusively to Xtalic, forms the basis of a growing body of intellectual property around the practical, low cost commercialization of this technology.
The degree and consistency of crystal formation control is dramatic. Typically crystals might form at the 50-200 nanometer scale, and the Xtalic process produces crystals below 10 nanometers in scale, more than two orders of magnitude smaller in terms of volume.
The Xtalic control of crystal size and structure can be tuned by application to deliver targeted properties and can be adjusted within a single coating application. Many applications desire a softer initial layer and then a hard, corrosion and scratch resistant layer at the surface. Typically this needs to be created through multiple applications of different coatings with these distinct properties. Xtalic’s approach allows the composition of a coating to be dynamically controlled during application to produce individual layers with desired properties during a single coating step. This allows production of complex layered structures in a single step, which reduces the number of steps, time and energy required in the replacement of existing multi-layered processes. It also allows the creation of very thin multilayered coatings with enhanced properties in applications where this was previously impossible or impractical.
Xtalic's nanostructured metal alloys are applied through electrodeposition (electroplating), which is an inexpensive, widely available commercial process.
Xtalic is a clean technology without the environmental and health and safety issues associated with many other metal coatings. Xtalic is committed to using our technology to deliver new capabilities to the marketplace, as well as replace existing processes that damage the environment or pose risks to workers.