Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Thin film coatings are often applied to manufactured components to enhance their functional characteristics, improving scratch resistance, tailoring optical response, or augmenting catalytic activity. Traditionally the underlying component performs the primary function, while the dense slab-like coating protects or enhances that functionality. Recent advances in the field of nanotechnology have prompted a shift in this design paradigm toward using structured thin films to provide core functionality where the underlying component now acts simply as a carrier for the nano-engineered coating. Nano-engineered coatings have complicated internal structure at the atomic scale, and exhibit exceptional characteristics not available in traditional materials. While research has demonstrated a wide range of beneficial properties of nano-engineered coating materials, manufacturing of these materials has been limited by difficulties in reliably scaling-up laboratory-scale proof-of-concept synthesis methods to large-scale processes with sufficient production yield to allow economical manufacturing. In collaboration with two leading Canadian manufacturers, Novelis Inc. and the Bank of Canada, this strategic project will develop novel and improved nanostructured materials and their manufacturing processes. Novelis and the Bank of Canada utilize 'web' coating techniques that apply functional coatings onto continuous foil or plastic materials for energy, security, and other applications. The Bank of Canada coats continuous plastic 'web' with multilayer interference coatings for the colour-shifting security feature used on Canadian banknotes to prevent counterfeiting. Next-generation security features for banknotes and other manufactured products will incorporate more complicated nanostructured coatings, and this strategic project will develop and advance manufacturing processes for the economical production of these coatings. Novelis applies coatings of a variety of materials onto continuous foil 'web' for a broad-range of applications, and this strategic project will assist Novelis in developing next-generation processes for added-value manufacturing of coated-foil products.