Commercial benefit from Spark award

Results of a research project undertaken by Applied Functional Materials could lead to a commercial deal worth about £200,000, thanks to a project funded as part of the Spark awards programme.

Results of a research project undertaken by Applied Functional Materials (AFM) could lead to a commercial deal worth about £200,000, thanks to a project funded as part of the Spark awards programme, run by the Powdermatrix Faraday Partnership.

AFM, a spin-out company from the University of Birmingham, manufactures complex shaped ceramic devices.

It recently carried out feasibility studies into establishing an efficient manufacturing process for creating curved piezo-composites.

Piezo-composites are used in ultrasonic applications such as sonar, non-destructive testing and biomedical imaging.

In ultrasonics, piezo-composites have proven to perform better than just using a sintered ceramic block.

However, the manufacturing process is quite slow and wasteful of material.

AFM believed that a more efficient method could be used to create curved piezo-composites and was awarded the Spark funding to test its theory.

The results from the feasibility studies have shown that manufacture of curved piezo-composites is possible, and have generated commercial interest.

The study has also led to the development of a moulding technique that has potential for a number of applications both in the areas that AFM is supplying into (for example, satellite communications) and in applications new to AFM.

Spark awards are given to fund problem solving, proof-of-concept, technology demonstration and other development activities for companies that are members of Powdermatrix, the Faraday Partnership based at Ceram, which is responsible for promoting advanced ceramics and powder technology.

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