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Roll-to-Roll Fabrication and Processing
From batteries to bulletproof vests to personalized health monitoring sensors integrated into clothing, the Roll-to-Roll Fabrication and Processing core facility enables a range of advanced manufacturing applications.
The facility houses 29 different pieces of equipment for coating, patterning, and photolithography.
“The facility is expanding the capability to look at more advanced products. We offer the technology as well as the expertise to help users develop products that are more functional and lower cost,” said director Jeff Morse, pictured below. “Hopefully this will not only create new jobs here in Massachusetts and across the country, but will possibly even re-shore jobs that have gone away to lower-cost locations abroad.”
Morse is an electrical and computer engineer and a UMass Amherst graduate. He worked for over two decades in a government research lab on the west coast before returning to campus in 2008 to work on a National Science Foundation-funded nanomanufacturing initiative. This eventually evolved into his role overseeing the Advanced Print and Roll-to-Roll core facility.
According to Morse, a significant portion of the facility’s users today are UMass faculty and graduate students. The facility also serves researchers at other universities and a growing number of industry users.
“A lot of small companies are coming to us, as well as medium and larger companies. In man instances, it can be very expensive to buy this kind of equipment, so having access to our facility lets industry partners get started or test out equipment before buying it on their own,” he said. “We offer very competitive rates, and can work with companies over a period of several months or even years.”
The type of work varies widely. For example, said Morse, one faculty group is using the facility to develop a vibration-monitoring sensor that alerts to anomalous behavior leading to failure of pumps in petrochemical plants. Another group is coating sensors onto threads and clothing for health-monitoring applications. A company is developing very thin, flexible silicon chips that can be embedded in paper documents for security and anti-counterfeiting purposes.
Barbara Stewart, the facility’s lab manager and process engineer (pictured above, left), was recruited to Roll-to-Roll based on her many years of experience working in a range of research facilities in academia and industry.
Part of her role involves overseeing student training at the facility.
“I spend time familiarizing them with lab safety and protocols, and training them on a project I am overseeing. Once they are competent, they can work on it more independently,” she said.
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Stewart sees the facility as offering great value in helping start-up companies get off the ground with an idea. “I’ve had two industrial partners who were able to launch their products and get investors as a result of being able to work in our facility.”
Optodot is one small company taking advantage of the equipment and expertise at the Roll-to-Roll facility. Kush Basu ’18 and his partner Ricci LaCentra are working to produce ceramic nanoparticle coatings for a lithium battery safety component they are developing.
“We’re an R&D-focused company with about 10 people. We’re small but we’re trying to do a lot, so it’s great working with UMass,” said Basu. “They have all the equipment and facilities that we as a small company can’t have. The staff have really taken the time to understand what’s unique about our formulation and helped us problem solve.”
