Conducting a great business
CondAlign is a young, thriving technology company with an international client base. Its core business is in the development of innovative conductive films for various applications, turning existing materials into high-value products through a patented technology to align particles in polymers.
CondAlign’s business is based on technology and product development before licensing to customers. One such product can best be described as a double-sided tape with anisotropic, or through-plane, conductivity. The company is steadily expanding its small but highly skilled team, and has recently enhanced process technology for continuous roll-to-roll production of conductive films at its new facilities in Oslo, Norway.
The pilot roll-to-roll (R2R) system has been supplied by Emerson & Renwick, with an integral, dual lamp GEW LeoLED UV curing system which instantly cures the polymer coatings to fix the position of the aligned particles, as illustrated. This is the second machine installed by CondAlign and it now enables them to offer their clients a low-volume interim production line for test materials, while those clients are transitioning to full production capacity at their own manufacturing sites. The machine is capable of producing up to 200sq.m per hour of finished film, sufficient to supply the customer with samples for qualification, prototyping and marketing activities.
Due to this diversity of applications, the film thicknesses can range from 5 µm to 3 mm. The heaviest films are often the thermally conductive type and contain ceramics or compounds such as boron nitride. This poses a challenge for the UV curing system and in order to ensure a consistent cure, the second UV LED lamphead has been designed to be reversible so that it can also irradiate from underneath the sample.CondAlign works with a range of products to customers from several market segments. This can be electrically conductive tapes and substrates, as well as thermal-interface materials for the electronics industry, biocompatible films to the healthcare sector, and membranes for gas and liquid separation. The application areas define the required material properties for each film, such as conductivity, elasticity, thickness, weight, softness, transparency, adhesiveness and biocompatibility.
Read the rest of the case study on the GEW website.