Canada. For more than 20 years, Mechanical Engineering Professor Javad Mostaghimi (MIE) and his colleagues at the Center for Advanced Coating Technologies have been conducting basic research on how coatings work, test and develop new coatings, as well as technologies to apply them.
Take the engines of airplanes. "According to thermodynamics," Mostaghimi says, "if you run an engine at higher temperatures, you get better efficiency. We can run engines at higher temperatures if the materials are made to be able to withstand those temperatures. The challenge is that materials that can withstand those temperatures are not good for manufacturing. Ceramics, for example, can withstand high temperatures, but it is fragile. It can't be used to build things. But you can put a thin layer of it into other things that are good for manufacturing."
Coatings, Mostaghimi says, used to be more of an art. His group is bringing scientific rigor to this field. "The basic, fundamental building block of the coating is the impact of droplets on the surface," he says, so his team models and takes pictures of what happens when droplets hit surfaces.
Based on a laboratory full of various machines and tools to test different aerosols and surfaces, all kinds of challenges have been carried out, including:
• The development of coatings for reactors that process waste from nuclear power generation and do so in hydrogen.
• Improve the infrastructure that burns municipal waste to make the process greener.
• Development of coatings for valves in factories so that they are much less vulnerable to corrosion.
Coatings, Mostaghimi says, can be invisible in most cases, but that's only because it's "a technology that allows it."
