R&D and Trial Manufacturing Facility

Quantiam’s 34,000-ft² R&D and trial manufacturing facility in Edmonton houses our extensive in-house materials characterization and development capabilities.  Contact us today to find out how we can solve your materials and process-related pain points.

Materials Characterization

Surface and Advanced Structure Probes

• Two X-ray diffraction units, one for high temperature
• One FESEM-EDS and one SEM/EDS
• Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) with SIMS
• Small-spot X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)

Metallography

• Conventional and Damage-sensitive materials
• Hot and cold sample mounting
• Optical microscopy

Physical and Mechanical Properties

• Hardness testing (micro and macro)
• Instron Tensile and bend-testing
• Fracture toughness (pull and bend-testing)
• Surface roughness and  optical profilometry
• 3D laser mapping for internal surfaces of tubulars

Particle/Powder Testing

• Particle size analysis (laser diffraction and DLS)
• Zeta potential
• BET surface area

Thermogravimetric Analysis

• Three TGA units; powder and coupon samples to 35g
• Up to 1600°C
• Testing atmospheres include:
  • up to 100% Hydrogen
  • up to 90% steam/humidity
  • Ethane-steam pyrolysis
  • Oxidizing/inert/reducing/reactive gases
• Differential scanning calorimetry

Electrochemical Testing

• Keithley single channel potentiostat
• PARStat 8-channel potentiostat
• Arbin 32-channel potentiostat with Gamry EIS

Photovoltaic Testing

• G2V AM1.5G solar simulators
  • 400 cm²
  • 1 m²

Materials Performance Testing

High Temperature Testing

Extensive high temperature testing up to 1500°C under various atmospheres including:

• Vacuum (< 10^-3 Torr)
• Inert
• Oxidizing
• Reducing
• Carburizing
• Reactive gases

Wear Performance Testing

• ASTM G65 Abrasion Wear Testing
• ASTM G99 Pin-on-Disk Wear Testing
• ASTM G133 Sliding Wear Testing
• ASTM G171 Scratch Resistance Testing

Catalyst Testing

Catalyst performance testing/screening:

• temperatures up to 1000°C
• pressures up to 50 atm.
• on-line analysis of reaction products with gas chromatography (GC) and mass spectrometry (MS)

 

Materials, Manufacturing & Process Development

Rapid Prototyping

• OpenFoam CAD
• 3D printing

Coating Development

• Quantiam-proprietary coating manufacturing technology for internal and external surfaces of complex shapes.
• tape-casting to 25mm thickness
• spray coating:
  • 2D Sono-tek spray coater with temperature control
  • 3D 5-axis robot arm spray coater for full-scale workpieces

Powder Processing

• Ball-milling
• Mechanical alloying
• Lab-scale and production-scale attritors

Chemical Process Development

• Air-free chemical synthesis
• Modular jacketed reactor system for batch sizes of 100 mL – 5L

 

Surface Analysis Capabilities