Atmospheric pressure microwave plasma technology offers many advantages over conventional technologies currently used in industry for heat treatments and coatings. This new technology is inexpensive and green. It also saves energy, reduces cycle time, offers new pathways to materials processing and is versatile due to its applicability to diverse applications. These applications include all heat treat applications (carburization, nitriding, etc.), various hard materials and anti-reflective coatings, hydrogen generation for fuel cells and many others. One of the key feature of atmospheric pressure plasma is that it can be used very efficiently as a source of heat and/or as a chemical reactor for complete dissociation of molecules needed for coatings and materials synthesis.
Principal Benefits
- Rapid heating- Rapid heating allows any type of surface treatment while maintaining lower temperatures in the bulk preventing grain growth and degradation of mechanical properties. Temperatures of 1500 C have been achieved in few minutes with 2.5 kW microwave power. This heating rate can easily be improved by increasing the power. Unlike induction heating which works only for materials that couple to the field, this technology is applicable to all materials.
- Higher deposition rates for coatings- At atmospheric pressure, the number density of available species in plasma for deposition, is higher resulting in higher deposition rates. Without using vacuum pumps etc., oxygen levels below ppm have been obtained in the processing volume.
- Energy efficient- Conventional gas fired furnaces are highly energy inefficient due to unnecessary heating of furnace liners, conveyor belt and other internal components. Due to extremely high coupling of microwave energy to plasma (>95%) and formation of plasma only around the part, this technology offers a very high energy efficient processing method.
- Atmospheric pressure process- No vacuum pumps or associated components are required.
- High temperature capability- Extremely high temperatures (> 2000 C) can be obtained.
- Applicable to all materials- No restrictions. Technology applies to all metals, ceramics, composites etc.
- Atmosphere control- Oxygen levels below ppm can be obtained.
- Inexpensive- Only a few kW of microwave power is required for most processing of small size parts. Standard 2.45 GHz magnetrons which generate microwave power are relatively inexpensive.
- Green- This technology does not produce any greenhouse gases.
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