Ionix Advanced Technologies Limited, a company specialising in extreme environment piezoelectric materials and devices, announced this month that it had received a funding award from the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, to co-fund a project aimed to design, build, test and demonstrate a new prototype design of ultrasound transducer that can be used in high temperature environments.
The project will help to accelerate the commercialisation of transducer devices based on Ionix’s novel high-temperature piezoelectric materials, and will find applications in structural health monitoring, flow measurement and range finding applications in temperatures ranging from 200 to 450°C.
Efficient and reliable piezoelectric devices
Ionix’s devices have the potential to offer significant cost and energy savings, by allowing more efficient and reliable process and inspection operations in extreme environments, where existing technology is unable to operate effectively.
This technology has already been proven in chemical processing, but with the support of the Innovate UK award, developing the high temperature device components and packaging to work with the piezoelectric materials will propel it in to new areas, particularly oil and gas applications, where permanent on-pipe condition monitoring would become possible. Higher temperature weld inspection and other NDT applications will also emerge from the project.
Dr David Astles, Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We are delighted to receive this funding award from Innovate UK, and see this as an excellent opportunity to help accelerate the commercial development of a range of devices that will improve measurement and monitoring in hostile environments, a critical issue for many major industries”.
Ionix are seeking further development partners motivated to work in collaboration to develop devices based on its materials and to share the commercial benefits of this novel technology.
