Nano/Microfabricated Products Under Development
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Chemical Microsensor Platform
A novel low power robust gas microsensor platform has been developed based on nanoporous anodic alumina. This patented platform utilizes our HeatSENS™ and AnoSENS™ technologies, and offers many benefits including low power, improved response time, higher sensitivity and greater selectivity. Several types of gas sensors are under development using this technology, including Humidity/Moisture, VOC, Formaldehyde, H2S, and H2 sensors among others.
- Membranes
The inherently uniform nanoporous architecture of self-organized anodic alumina makes it a promising platform for ceramic membranes with extremely narrow pore size distribution tunable in the 1 to 300 nm range. The alumina ceramic is chemically inert and resistant to high temperatures. These features provide multiple opportunities for developing a portfolio of membrane products for applications from gas separation, membrane-reactors and membrane standards to membranes for ultra- and nanofiltration, bioseparation and bioanalysis.
- Templated Nanowire Arrays & Nanocomposites
Anodic alumina is a nanoscale "honeycomb"-like material formed by uniform & parallel nanopores. This structure is an attractive and well-recognized host for templated nanofabrication. When combined with other micro and nanofabrication technologies, it enables novel materials with performance defined at the nanoscale. Both template-packaged nanoarrays and nanostructures extracted from the template are under development for a variety of applications, from monodisperse catalyst surfaces to nanocomposites and energy conversion materials.
- Energy Conversion Materials
Using templated nanofabrication, Synkera is developing high performance materials for energy conversion, with applications from 3rd generation photovoltaics to radiation detectors to energy storage. A novel material architecture, consisting of high-density arrays of 3-D nanoscale heterojunctions, is designed to:
- increase the active surface area by at least two orders of magnitude over planar analogues for higher energy density;
- radically engineer the effective bandgap to capture a broader portion of the solar spectrum; and
- enable rapid and efficient charge separation and minimize recombination.
This approach enables a family of novel photovoltaic material designs that are significantly more efficient than planar multijunctions. The processes that enable such precision engineering of the composite structure and composition at the nanoscale are inherently scalable to high-volume production and could provide a breakthrough in low-cost, high efficiency solar cells.
- Ceramic Microcomponents
Ceramic micromachining is one of Synkera's core technologies and targets chemically resistant and mechanically robust ceramic micro-components and micro-devices. In addition to gas microsensors, Synkera currently pursues development of other ceramic microcomponents and microdevices, such as robust microheaters, microchannel plates, catalytic membrane-reactors, mesoscopic power systems, and microchips for cell culture, microfluidics and bioanalysis applications.
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