MIPS Project Detail:

Microsphere Material Solutions

Maturation of Amorphous Glass Foams Manufacturing

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Company

Microsphere Material Solutions

Rockville

Montgomery

County

, Maryland

Founded:

2016

Website:

https://www.microspherematerialsolutions.com/

Company Description:

Microsphere Material Solutions LLC is a producer of ultra-high-strength, low-weight materials that provide game-changing capabilities for many applications. Microsphere Material Solutions engages in both the small batch production and research and development of amorphous glass foams for cutting-edge applications. The extraordinary compressive strength-to-weight ratio of amorphous glass foam materials allows for the exploration of new form factors and enhanced capabilities in a wide variety of markets.

MIPS Project

Maturation of Amorphous Glass Foams Manufacturing

Project #

5819

|

MIPS Round

58 |

Starting Date:

Oct 2016

MIPS Project Challenge:
The goal of this MIPS project was to improve the process of producing the company’s foam product, as well as enhance its material configurability in terms of production size, shape and material characteristics, such as density and strength-to-weight ratio.

Project Scope:
Through this MIPS project, researchers were slated to: model the thermodynamic process during the production of the foam material, and refine and mature the production process for various sizes and configurations of the foam material; develop methods of producing larger sizes and shapes of the foam material; and perform mechanical testing and structural characterization of the produced foam material to assess the material characteristics in order to refine and tune the manufacturing process.

Through the research conducted under MIPS, we validated our formulation and radically increased our manufacturing capability. MIPS has provided our company with the catalyst for developing a commercial product derived from lab-scale technology.

Matthew Demay, Co-Founder, Microsphere Material Solutions, LLC

Results:

Prior to working with Prof. Wereley through MIPS, the company’s product was labscale. The MIPS research enabled Microsphere Material Solutions to make significant progress toward a sellable product by honing the product recipe to the specifications required by submersible and armoring manufacturers. To date, the company has already produced samples with the necessary dimensions for a potential partner in the submersible segment.

Glass syntactic foam is a commonly used material for submersible vehicle buoyancy applications and is one of the limiting factors in creating smaller vehicles due to its lower strength at any given density (syntactic foam consists of glass microspheres bonded with a polymer such as epoxy). MMS’s amorphous glass foam is less dense and stronger at any given depth and enables smaller vehicles to achieve the same depth as larger vehicles. MMS’s foam is composed of only the glass microspheres, with no additional material or additives.