Smart Material Solutions, Inc. is a startup company developing an advanced manufacturing process called “nanocoining” that can seamlessly nanopattern drum molds for roll-to-roll manufacturing. The patented process covers more than 600 mm2 of metal every minute with nanofeatures or hierarchical features that can be either periodic, stochastic, or arbitrarily arranged. This exceptionally high coverage rate is hundreds of times faster than competing technologies like electron-beam lithography, enabling nanopatterning that was previously feasible for only small, academic experiments to be applied on the industrial scale. Nanocoining opens the door for nanostructured surfaces with unique optical and wetting properties to be applied to a variety of commercial products including OLEDs, biosensors, wire-grid polarizers, solar panels, and windows. This seminar will focus on the key technical challenges in the ultra-precision indenting process, whereby a nanopatterned diamond die is indented into the metal surface 50,000 times per second via a novel ultrasonic resonant actuator, with each indent precisely registered side-byside. An operational envelope will be discussed along with potential end-use applications.
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