Gamechanger
Advanced Materials & Manufacturing
The impact of the space environment on materials and manufacturing processes can lead to new and improved materials as well as manufacturing processes. Resulting innovations have a positive impact on both Earth and Space-based applications.
Impacts of the Space Environment onAdvanced Materials & Manufacturing
No Buoyancy
In space, matters can be mixed evenly no matter their denisty due to the impaired phase separation process.
No Sedimentation
Nothing pulls you down, which allows for more uniform growth of microstructures such as crystals.
Your Innovation Space
Improved Formulation
- Synthesising, Mixing & Emulsifying
- Lyophilization
- Polymerization
- Flow Chemistry
- Furnace Crystallization
Better Deposition
- Electrodeposition
- Laser Annealing
- CVD
- MBE
- ALD
- Spraying and Coating
Advanced Materials
- Ceramics
- Functional Coatings & Thin Film Systems
- Graphene
- Nanomaterials
- Polymers & Fibres
- Superalloys
TECH-DEMO
3D PRINTING PLASTICS IN SPACE
The Experimental Layer Technology Manufacturing (MELT) project aimed to design, develop and test a fully functional 3D printer capable of working under ISS (International Space Station) microgravity conditions. The MELT printer can print a wide variety of thermoplastics from ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), as used in Lego, up to high-melting point engineering thermoplastics such PEEK (Polyether ether ketone), which is robust enough to substitute for metal materials in some cases.
ENERGETIC
MULTISCALE BOILING IN SPACE
Boiling is a process used in many engineering fields such as energy conversion, environmental applications, food and chemical process industries, and the space sector.
A microgravity environment can allow a better comprehension of the underlying phenomena in the boiling process. Gravity tends indeed to make the understanding of the boiling process extremely complex for several reasons. First of all, the thermally-driven buoyancy flows overshadow other important physical phenomena such as thermo-capillary flows, bubble-induced convection, and transient thermal diffusion, to cite a few. Such phenomena are not only surpassed by the thermally driven buoyancy flows, but they are also intrinsically coupled with them. Such a coupling effect is highly non-linear. As such, the unique possibility of a better comprehension of all the physical phenomena that are masked by gravity is only possible if the overall physical process is studied and analyzed in microgravity.
