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Company Italy
A young spin-off developed an innovative technology for the coating of flexible (plastic or metallic) substrates with high quality sputtered materials, from noble materials to oxides and composite, including the possibility to obtain the coating in the form of patterns with high definition in a one-step in line deposition process. This permits to avoid long time processes and to obtain a perfectly clean surface maintaining the cost low and compatible for heavy production. The process for the realization of such a coating avoids the use of any oil or organic coating and in general any kind of substance that could pollute or soil the surface. The high quality of the coating (like as pure gold or platinum), the high definition of the patterns combined with the cleanness, the high productivity and the very low cost make this technology perfectly suitable for any kind of platform like as sensors, both for biotechnology or medicine and IT or electronic circuits.
The company incorporates several expertises from high-level research to engineering and industrial production.
The company is looking for industrial partners interested in using this advantageous application in the production of their products or in the development of new platform or new innovative devices.
Commercial partner for the development of the technology are welcome as well. Companies and research institutes are possible partners in developing new interesting application.
Description/ Special features..
Sensors with higher resolutions and new capabilities are discovered every day. The need to translate the output from a lab-scale to a production process in order to bring the technology to a large-scale use push the research toward the development of methods for make the sensors feasible in an easy and economical way maintaining high quality and performances.
Sensors and electronic circuits, both for biotechnologies and medicine, and for IT and electronics, need perfectly clean surfaces and a perfect control of their parameters. They commonly use coating of different materials to ensure optimum surfaces for the linking of molecules or pastes (Enzymatic for instance), for the best electrical conduction, for high quality imaging or detection, and for signal transmission.
Good results are obtained by deposition methods like as PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) technologies, including sputtering or e-beam. All this methods ensure good surfaces and results but the cost being still high for production.
Moreover every kind of sensors and devices need the surface to be confined in well-defined zones, creating channels and pads. The possibility to realize them by means of the state of the art of PVD technologies is still far from being feasible in a large-scale production. Problems are meanly related to the high cost per device and low productivity in a large scale (laser ablations and photolithography) and/or no cleanness or low pattern definition (photolithography or oil pattern before deposition).
Common methods for large-scale devices production are still using non-vacuum coating with lacquer or paints including metallic particles.
Moreover most of the methods obtain a surface with impurities or residues leaving it not perfectly clean.
The need of a method for a production of disposable devices for genetic test sensor pushed the company's research toward the development of its innovative technology for the production of high quality devices by means of high definition sputtering deposition and patterning of thin films onto flexible substrates.
The technology comprises a one-step process for the vacuum coating by means of magnetron sputtering onto flexible substrates (like as plastic or metallic webs) and an innovative system for the realization of the patterns. The system permits to realize high quality coating with thickness ranging from several Angstroms to few microns and high definition patterns with channels and voids down to 50icrons. The magnetron sputtering technology ensure high adhesion to the substrate and optimum coating quality, being the coating a pure noble metal (like as gold or platinum) or a conductive oxide (ZnO, ITO). Important innovations lie in the technology for patterning, avoiding any kind of oil or pollutants and further processes outside the vacuum chamber, ensuring high cleanness and a cheap process.
The coating process includes several steps for a pre-treatment of the surface, and/or the deposition of different metal layers and(or a post treatment to obtain the desired surface properties.
The company is continuously increasing its staff incorporating several expertise in the field of bio-technology, sensoring, thin-film technology, mechanical and materials engineers, all of them selected from the higher level of the academic and industrial world.
Possible applications range form sensors for genetic and biological high throughout testing to environmental sensing devices and to a wide range of applications in the field of electronic devices for IT or flexible circuitry (RF-ID antennas for instance). | 
