Development and Commercialization of Nanocomposite Coating Technologies

Tetramer developed a novel type of security coating that has generated significant interest in both DoD and commercial markets; however, the reproducibility and Manufacturing Readiness Level of the coatings is too low to transition this technology to interested markets. Tetramer proposes this Phase IIB to design and build a coater device enabling reproducible processing of these materials for the purpose of validating their utility as security coatings. The innovation of this technology is its sensitivity to perimeter breaches for coated substrates; however, the coatings are highly processing dependent and require stable processing conditions to prevent false positive tamper indication. To develop a system capable of providing uniform, reproducible manufacturing conditions, Tetramer will adapt a computer numerical control motion system to provide digital control of a coating fixture. By integrating the motion controls with the deposition controls, various deposition techniques and processes will be investigated to identify the processing conditions necessary to prepare security coatings with consistent and predictable performance. Since the films are comprised of polymer materials that are deposited as monomers, part of the process research will include the development of consistent, uniform curing methods as well as evaluation of starting materials to provide acceptance criteria that are directly tied to coating properties. In Phases I and II, the fundamental operating concepts of this technology were successfully demonstrated. Coatings were manufactured by hand with manual casting and curing techniques and integrated with LEDs and sensors to exhibit the technology for potential customers in security and defense markets. These potential customers enthusiastically received the concept but stated that the potential for false positives from variable manufacturing processes was a risk to scale up. These companies have encouraged Tetramer to pursue this opportunity to advance the manufacturability of these coatings and have offered up to $200,000 of in kind support to facilitate advancement of this technology for future DoD and commercial applications. Key applications for this technology are for tamper indicating or anti tampering coatings. Several iterations of the coatings are described during the proposal with different levels of complexity and utility. High security coatings (e.g. For physical security of electronics and servers or Nuclear Safeguards) are enabled using this technology that can autonomously detect tampering events to the perimeter of a protected volume and initialize further tamper indicating or anti tamper mechanisms. Another form of the coatings can be used for 2factor authentication of products and has utility in commercial and governmental applications. Lastly, simple tamper indication coatings based on Tetramer® materials can be integrated with commercial thin films such as shrink wrap or product label films to provide novel tamper indicating and authentication functionality at low cost. Key Words: tamper indicating, coatings, safeguards, authentication, verification, tamper evident. Current tamper indicating technologies do not ufficiently indicate real and attempted attacks on protected volumes, allowing counterfeiting of commercial products and theft of sensitive documents, data, and weapons. Manufacture of unique coatings will enable a broad range of tamper indicating and anti-tamper technologies from simple tokens to autonomous tamper detection.