Material Development

A startup originally based in Rochester was created to develop flexible solar panels, offering a more robust and inexpensive alternative to solar cells deposited on silicon substrates. Lacking in-house resources at this early stage, the company conducted all its research and development activities in the CCMR facilities in collaboration with a Cornell materials science expert. Their work culminated in the development of a single crystal solar cell substrate that can be rolled, streamlining the deployment and manufacture of solar cells. This breakthrough enabled the company to secure multiple federal grants and millions of dollars of venture financing prior to relocating to California after being acquired by a larger company.

A manufacturer of certified standards for XRF instruments, facing a global supplier’s lack consistency, availability and quality, turned to the CCMR to develop new standards that none of their competitors could offer. Through a process specifically designed to reduce stress in sputtered films, metal was deposited onto plastic substrates. This yielded a unique product, that the company could produce locally instead of relying of a sole global supplier. It gave the company an edge over its international competitors, reinforcing its position as a “one-stop shop” for reference standards in a crowded global marketplace.

New materials developed by a small Rochester-based company in the lab of a chemistry professor at Cornell are being used to fabricate organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that will provide the industry with a cheaper processing alternative. The company, which was founded by former Kodak researchers, benefited from Cornell’s help to synthesize small batches of amorphous charge-transporting molecular glasses, enabling the company to create an OLED prototype with engineers at the University of Rochester. A subsequent grant from the Department of Energy is being used to demonstrate to large-scale manufacturers of OLEDs that devices fabricated with the newly developed molecules are commercially viable and more efficient.

The link between materials’ structure and their properties is of strong interest to multiple industry sectors manufacturers. A global company requested the help of the CCMR to optimize the mechanical performance of materials used in exterior and interior components of the automotive industry, its largest market. A Cornell chemist synthesized semi-crystalline polyolefins with specific microarchitectures that enhance their mechanical properties. The synthesis of precisely controlled polymer architectures is making the company’s ultimate goal possible: the commercial production of articles with designed structure and properties.

To answer consumers’ needs, more and more manufacturers are developing lighter and more flexible products. A multinational conglomerate producing consumer electronics approached the CCMR, which partnered it with a Cornell chemical engineering faculty. Using electrospinning, a conventional fiber-making process, which applies an electric field and a whipping motion to draw a fiber out of a polymer solution or melted polymer, the Cornell faculty produced polymer-metal hybrid fillers. These flexible polymer composites can replace heavy metal parts. Their electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties were analyzed resulting in the selection of the most appropriate composites for consumer electronics products.

A world leader in filtration systems developed new materials for filtration membranes in collaboration with a Cornell materials science expert. The Cornell faculty utilizes block copolymer self-assembly to produce membranes with well-ordered, densely packed, uniform pores in the top surface. Using proprietary techniques developed in his lab, the expert fabricated scalable membranes with high fluxes and sharp molecular weight (MW) cut-offs. The company has now a wide range of membranes specifically suited for a variety of applications to offer to diverse industry sectors in function of their needs.

“Materials by Design” refers to research that seeks to designing new materials for specific applications or with specific properties. A New Jersey based specialty chemicals and materials technology company is working with a Cornell mechanical engineer to develop micro-mechanics based models on the onset of failure of particle toughened composite materials. Its goal is to apply these models to the design of material systems with improved toughness. This collaboration led to further grant applications and to an international partnership. At the completion of the project, the company will have a set of tools enabling the development of unique materials for specific targeted applications.