2022 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit

iMatSci Innovator Profiles

 

 

AccuStrata

Innovation:  Atomic Optical Monitoring System (AtOMS)

AccuStrata’s Atomic Optical Monitoring System (AtOMS) an in-situ thin film process control tool, monitors the flux of chemical elements during the deposition/etching process and provides real time control of the individual elemental deposition/etching rates and film chemical composition and uniformity. AtOMS monitors the area under the substrate. It is agnostic to the type of films, their thickness or multilayer complexity, and to the substrate shape and motion. It’s a commercial product for controlling opaque films, compound materials and alloys, and complex multilayers and pre-engineered interfaces. It achieves unprecedented accuracy in deposition/etching rates and film’s chemical composition.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: George Atanasoff, Tim Collins
Contact: [email protected] | 240.339.4129 | accustrata.com

AeroShield Materials

Innovation:  Transparent, Super-insulating Silica Aerogels

Founded in 2019 as a spin out from MIT, AeroShield’s mission is to deliver innovative new materials to make our lives more sustainable. Our patented transparent silica aerogel has the optical properties of glass, while maintaining the super-insulating, lightweight, fire resistant properties of aerogels. Just 3mm of AeroShield’s material between the two panes of glass in a standard window can improve the thermal performance by 65%, bringing state of the art thermal comfort and energy savings to homeowners at an affordable price.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: David Avison, Aaron Baskerville-Bridges, Vishnu Ramasawmy, Elise Strobach, Kyle Wilke
Contact: [email protected] | 617.487.9945 | aeroshield.tech

Baleena

Innovation:  Closing the Loop: Bio-inspired Filter to Remove Microplastics from Water

Microfiber pollution accounts for approximately 35% of microplastics in the oceans. Synthetic clothing sheds microfibers during the washing process, which are transported out of the home via wastewater and ultimately deposited into our oceans. Baleena is pioneering a closed-loop, highly-efficient microfiber trapping device to reduce microplastic emissions at their point source. Baleena’s technology combines a protective outer shell and bio-inspired inner filter, trapping microfibers within the washing machine. The sea sponge inspired filter is designed to break down to separate the collected microfibers and repurpose them. The degraded filter materials can then be purified and reused, reducing Baleena’s material consumption.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Sarah Beth Gleeson, Shoshana Weintraub, Julia Yan
Contact: [email protected] | [email protected] | baleena.net

Folia Materials

Innovation:  Nano Metal Coating for Sustainable Paper

Folia Materials has developed a means to metallize paper with the technical performance typically found in expensive specialty materials, but at a fraction of the cost. Folia’s patented technology — invented by CTO Dr. Teri Dankovich’s during her McGill chemistry Ph.D. — enables manufacturing capability of nano-silver coated paper. This is possible by using non-toxic, commodity chemicals, applied as a coating on customers’ existing paper grades for use with existing reel-to-reel converting equipment or incorporated into multilayer composites for components or finished goods. Folia’s innovations achieve the low pricing required for high-volume consumable products to address global problems: Packaging, Filtration, & Water.

Team: Theresa Dankovich, Jonathan Levine
Contact: [email protected] | foliamaterials.com

Guardion, Inc.

 

Innovation: Advancing Trace Detection of Matter with 2D Materials

Guardion is revolutionizing how the semiconductor, chemical analysis, and defense industries detect trace amounts of matter. This is a tiny amount of material that can drastically impact quality of manufacturing or be required to identify and locate explosives and chemical warfare agents. We do this by achieving the million times amplification needed to see this tiny amount of material using 10,000x less voltage than electron multipliers and eliminates the need for bulky and expensive vacuum pumps. This translates to better manufacturing yield and allows critical equipment stuck on a lab bench to become field portable.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Daniel Cohen, Dan Esposito, Swastik Kar, Kevin Mendez
Contact: [email protected] | 603.769.7265 | guardiontech.com


Halomine, Inc.

Innovation:  Making Every Surface an Antimicrobial Surface

Halomine is creating innovative solutions that manage surfaces and provide long-term protection against viruses, bacteria, and fungi/mold, in a variety of applications. The company’s proprietary combinations of specialty molecules and polymers are customized to provide prolonged antimicrobial efficacy to a wide range of surfaces and materials. Our revolutionary technologies extend the efficacy of chlorine-based products, providing long lasting, continuous protection against dangerous pathogens. This extended protection gives users unprecedented confidence in their disinfecting regimens, making Halomine essential for high-touch surfaces where the need to eliminate bacteria and viruses matters most.

Team: Ted Eveleth
Contact: [email protected] | 518.331.1133 | halomine.com

 

MAA’VA Inc.

Innovation:  Carbon Sequestering Eco-concrete with Incorporated Plastic Waste Aggregate

MAA’VA is developing a new carbon-cured, non-hydraulic eco-concrete for pre-cast building applications using a customized recycled plastic-based composite aggregate, to replace sand and rock aggregate found in traditional concrete, without using water, river sand, or traditional quarry aggregate. Our recycled plastic composite aggregate utilizes manufacturing waste, which is incorporated with waste plastic, to create a unique yet strong composite plasticbased aggregate. This combination provides improved strength and interfacial bonding, which has been a previous challenge. We are tackling the pre-cast concrete market, which accounts for approximately $14 billion USD in the US alone, with the concrete market accounting for over $1 trillion USD worldwide.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Monika Bleszynski, Glenn Hughes, Marieh Mehran
Contact: [email protected]| 720.545.4075 | maava.co

 

 

 


Matregenix, Inc.

Innovation:  MatriNova: Programmable Matrices for Soft-Tissue Repair

Matregenix developed MatriNova, a new platform technology for soft-tissue repair applications. MatriNova is a programable nonbiologic, resorbable, antimicrobial, nanofibrous matrix engineered to be similar in architecture to human extracellular matrix to promote tissue regeneration. Representing a new approach in soft-tissue repair, MatriNova will create a paradigm shift in the $20B soft-tissue repair space by shifting the market from xenografts and allografts materials to synthetic tissue engineered scaffolds. This innovative technology will meet the patients and surgeons demand at a notably lower price point while overcoming all limitations of the current available biological materials.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Kevin Guo, Ed O’Sullivan, Sherif Soliman
Contact: [email protected] | | 617.763.6334 | matregenix.com


Metal Light, Inc.

Innovation:  Metal-Air Generator

Metal Light is creating a sustainable power generator that runs on metal and air. Clean electricity is desperately needed in heavy industries like transportation and construction. Metal Light can provide clean electricity to vehicles and worksites in place of status quo diesel generators, eliminating all point of use emissions and reducing the global CO2 impact of the consumed energy. Additionally, Metal Light’s generator can run for over 24 hours without interruption and be refueled quickly. The Metal Light generator will allow for the decarbonization of several industries and enable solid metals as a sustainable, reusable fuel source.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Ryan Goethals
Contact: [email protected] | 917.772.8509 | metallight.io


Mussel Polymers, Inc.

Innovation:  Catechol Coatings for Wet Adhesions, Carbon Fiber, Dental and Biomed Applications

Mussel Polymers makes and sells poly catechol-styrene, a biomimetic of mussel glue. It is the first new class of adhesives in 60 years. PCS binds underwater, works as a primer to make other adhesives better, and has a wide range of biomedical, cosmetic, and industrial uses. We partner with companies to improve their products or develop new ones. Our current customers include the US Navy, Marines, and Reef restoration groups. We have prototypes of dental products and have recently demonstrated a one-step room temperature process to coat carbon and aramid fibers, likely increasing the strength of these materials 2x-3x.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: George Boyajian, Jason Stieg
Contact: [email protected] | musselpolymers.com

Norcon Technologies Holding, Inc.

Innovation:  Wide Field-of-View, Scalable Optics for 3D Imaging

Norcon is commercializing polymeric chalcogenide (Polycalc) optical components that uniquely meet the needs in the 800-1700 nm spectrum for 3D imaging optics. Current optical components rely on glass or polymers, which have low refractive index, resulting in narrow fields-of-view. They also are not compatible with the scaling requirements of CMOS imagers. Polycalc’ s high index enables lenses with wider fields-of-view, while material processing of Polycalc is wafer-scalable. Applications include facial recognition, AR/VR, security, and LiDAR. Our partners view Polycalc optics as “a game changer.” The market for 3D optics exceeds $1 billion, forecasted to reach $4 billion this decade.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Jay Liebowitz
Contact: [email protected] | Office: 520.358.5069 | Mobile: 617.480.5772 | norcontech.com

QATCH Technologies

Innovation:  The nanovisQ™

QATCH Technologies is developing a novel sensor technology that provides wide shear-rate range viscosity of extremely small volumes of bioformulation. This sensor technology can identify injectable and manufacturable formulations very early in drug discovery, owing to it’s small volume requirements (5μl) and high quality viscosity output, and can de-risk drug discovery for injectable formulations. While it is developed to guide biopharma to injectable and manufacturable drug products, it can disrupt formulation development for other markets such as pharma, cosmetics, and polymers. The nanovisQ™’s unique specs are a result of combining extremely sensitive and high frequency quartz resonators with MEMS-based microfluidics.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team: Zehra Parlak, Duygu Tekyetim
Contact: [email protected] | qatchtech.com

Ras Labs

Innovation:  Ras Labs' Tactile Fingertip™

Ras Labs is replicating human grasp. Our Tactile Fingertips™ are uncannily like human fingertips, with a soft, compliant interface and immediate grip interpretation. Our patented polymeric sensor system allows robots to gently handle objects – providing hand-like tactile touch and dexterous control – and reduces costly visualization. Tactile Fingertips are being field tested with robotic gripper manufacturers and with a large USA-based Fortune500 CPC. This technology is scalable and will transform robots for E-commerce and manufacturing, as well as for collaborative robotics so that humans and robots can work together intuitively and safely. We bring a sense of touch to your robot!

See a Video Demonstration »

Team:Calum Briggs, Lenore Rasmussen, Yanni Sporidis, Peter Vicars
Contact: [email protected] | 617.834.5556 | raslabs.com

SanaHeal, Inc.

Innovation:  Barnacle Glue-Inspired Hemostasis in Seconds

SanaHeal offers nature-inspired bioadhesive innovations for the repair and healing of challenging injuries across the human body. We focus on the design, manufacturing, and commercialization of bioadhesive products to improve the treatment of patients with life-threatening injuries such as bleeding and diabetic ulcers. Taking advantage of natureinspired novel wet adhesion technologies, we dramatically enhance the speed and efficacy of tissue repair and sealing while promoting the healing of wounds. SanaHeal’s solutions not only improve the treatment outcome and well-being of patients but also provide the socio-economic benefits of more cost-effective treatment of injuries in the healthcare system.

See a Video Demonstration »

Team:Patrick Rivelli, Hyunwoo Yuk
Contact: [email protected] | 650.248.4411 | sanaheal.com

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