The Formulator’s Dilemma: High Performance Without Corrosion or Dark Color
For lubricant specialists, the perfect balance is the holy grail. How do you create a grease that withstands extreme pressure and resists wear, but also doesn’t harm copper components and maintains a clean color? This question resonates in laboratories worldwide. Traditional extreme pressure (EP) and anti-wear (AW) additives, like molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂), are very effective, […]
Additives for Greases and Polymers: Enhance Lubrication and Resistance in Tribological Applications
At the core of industrial and automotive performance, the interaction between moving surfaces—a field known as tribology—determines the efficiency, lifespan, and reliability of machinery. Lubricating greases and engineering polymers are fundamental in this scenario, but their intrinsic performance is rarely sufficient for demanding modern conditions. This is where additives come in: precision chemical components designed […]
The Business Case for Innovation: How Replacing Steel Fiber Transforms Brake Pad Performance and Profitability
As professionals in the field of tribology and formulation, we constantly face a threefold pressure: to optimize performance, to reduce costs, and, increasingly, to lead the transition towards sustainability. The demands from OEMs regarding decarbonization and compliance with regulations like CSRD are not future trends; they are current business requirements. In this context, innovation is […]
Driving the Energy Transition: Forging the Energy Storage Materials of Tomorrow
The transition to a decarbonized global economy is not just an energy transition; it is, fundamentally, a materials revolution. The ability to generate clean energy from renewable sources has advanced at a dizzying pace, but the true catalyst for a sustainable future lies in how we store and deploy that energy. The bottleneck, and at […]
The Science of Safe Braking: Leading the Friction Industry
Every time you press the brake pedal, you unleash a fascinating process of engineering and science. An act we often take for granted is, in reality, the culmination of decades of research in tribology, materials science, and chemistry. Braking is the fundamental principle that ensures our safety in motion: the controlled conversion of kinetic energy […]
Innovating in Battery Manufacturing: The Industrial Scaling of Iron Sulfide (FeS) Anodes
The future of energy storage is forged through strategic collaborations between technology centers and industry, capable of transforming materials science into tangible solutions. This is the case of the alliance between the CIDETEC technology center and RIMSA (part of Innovamat), whose most recent work builds upon the promising results obtained in the LION-HD project, from […]
Permanent sprayed linings for tunnels: Fiber-Reinforced Structural Design
Permanent sprayed linings reinforced with fibers are increasingly being adopted in tunnel construction and other underground works due to their efficiency compared to traditional reinforcement methods. These linings offer significant advantages in terms of safety, cost-effectiveness, and performance. Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (FRC) incorporates structural or non-structural fibers into the concrete matrix and is applied using a […]
What are Friction Modifiers and how do they improve the performance of components?
Friction modifiers are special additives incorporated into friction materials to fine-tune their tribological properties, specifically their friction coefficient, wear and NVH characteristics. They play a crucial role in achieving the desired balance between friction stability, noise reduction, and wear resistance in various applications like brake pads, clutch discs, and other friction-dependent components. Common types of […]
Types of Friction Materials and Their Applications
Friction materials are essential components in a wide range of industrial applications. But what do we mean when we talk about “friction” materials? Basically, these are materials designed to generate a controlled resistance force, known as friction, between surfaces in relative contact. This force is essential to control movement, transmit power and ensure safety in […]
Lithium Titanate (LTO) Batteries: Powering the future beyond the EV
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have revolutionized energy storage. The growing demand for energy storage systems over the last decades to power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles has dramatically changed the paradigm we were used to. But within the different kind of batteries that have been implemented, depending mainly on the specific application requirements and availability […]