Associate Professor Andrew Ang’s business is metallic powders, but the level at which his engineering operates is at the sub-microscopic scale. When it comes to manufacturing the high-entropy materials that are transforming advanced manufacturing, Ang has individual atoms in mind.
That’s the secret behind EntroMat, the company he co-founded based on patented technology he devised with his colleagues at Swinburne University of Technology. And the materials Ang produces at EntroMat aren’t just highly customised alloys that deliver improved performance and exhibit better properties than traditional metals; they’re also a bold step forward in the creation of a sustainable, circular economy.
According to Ang, EntroMat’s approach represents an entirely new approach to alloying materials.
“Instead of forming an alloy with just one primary element, such as taking iron and adding a little bit of carbon as well as nickel and chromium to get stainless steel, we turn the process upside down,” he said.
“If you increase the number of elements sufficiently — to more than five — it creates what we now know as a high-entropy alloy and forms crystal structures rather than adverse inter-metallics. We alloy by atomic percentage rather than weight percentage.”
Fine-tuning the composition in this way enables alloys with a remarkable combination of properties that are suitable for an exciting array of advanced applications.
Circular sourcing
EntroMat is not the first company to use the high-entropy process, but its source of feedstock is notable for its sustainability.
“If you use only pure elements to make high-entropy alloys, which is what most people do, it quickly becomes cost prohibitive,” Ang said.
“We take recycled material, we upscale it, and we turn it into a high-entropy alloy, then we transform it into high-entropy alloy powder.”
Sourcing nickel, cobalt and rare earth minerals for the alloys would not be cost-effective using normal processes.
“The beauty of high-entropy alloys is that if you can melt it and you can control the contamination, then you can create an alloy that is much better than its parent metals,” Ang said.
“Our group is now exploring whether we can alloy materials when they’re not equiatomic [containing equal numbers of two or more atoms]. Then we could use far fewer rare earths while still achieving the high-entropy effect.”
The powder EntroMat produces has a broad array of uses, from thermal spraying to additive manufacturing. Among the company’s partners is D&T Hydraulics, a remanufacturing service provider working in the mining industry in Mackay, Far North Queensland.
D&T Hydraulics produces hydraulic cylinders that are currently coated in chrome.
“There’s no issue with chrome, but there’s an issue with the chroming process: one has to deal with the spent chrome solution, which is carcinogenic,” explained Ang.
“By using our high-entropy alloys, they can replace the chroming process with a high-tech laser coating with improved performance, and they can also use that same material to repair the dimensions that have been lost during mining operations.”
But EntroMat’s alloys have uses beyond the mining sector.
“We have a number of targeted applications,” Ang said.
“High-entropy alloys have already proven to perform better certain extreme high temperature environments: in components of a rocket engine, for instance. There are also applications to prevent anti-fouling of critical components of a marine vessel, as well as for batteries in new energy applications.”
Ang also sees potential for the material to be used in the defence sector, and even extreme environments such as outer space.
Because EntroMat’s technology expands the range of elements that can be used in an alloy, it also expands the array of ways they can be combined; Ang estimates there are millions of potential alloys based on what’s available in the periodic table, even if they restrict their outlook to what can be practically and safely used.
“We use machine learning and artificial intelligence to guide our innovative material creation process,” he said.
“One of the key capabilities of EntroMat is we understand not only the material creation, but how the material will perform through the coating, laser additive or traditional powder metallurgical processes.”
Climbing Mount Everest
EntroMat began life as a spinout from Swinburne University of Technology, and Ang said he is immensely grateful for the support that it and the Australian Research Council’s Industrial Transformation Training Centre in Surface Engineering for Advanced Materials has provided.
The company is built on more than a decade of research and collaboration between Ang and Distinguished Professor Chris Berndt, with support from Swinburne University of Technology and colleagues such as Greg Lindsay and Dr Ashok Meghwal who are leading the growth of EntroMat into the global market.
It is Swinburne University of Technology’s first spinout through Breakthrough Victoria, which matched its funding as part of commitment to commercialise critical research from Victorian universities. Instead of just intellectual property generation, a core focus of Swinburne is to engage in commercialisation and invest in deep tech startups like EntroMat.
“Creating a startup is like your own Mount Everest adventure,” Ang said.
“If you don’t have people helping you or shepherding you, you’re going to fall/fail. If we hadn’t gone on that journey, we wouldn’t know how to use the resources or create a start-up. Swinburne is very innovative and supportive in that regard as a university.”
To find out more about Swinburne’s collaboration with startups, , visit the Swinburne University of Technology website.
