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Fluid Friendly (Image 4)

Caption:

A close-up of the "lapping" machine used to evaluate fluids during research that engineered a new environmentally friendly fluid for use in ceramic polishing. The fluid was derived in part from green tea. The chemical is part of a slurry that polishes the ceramics—made from aluminum oxide and titanium carbide—used in computer hard drive read-write heads. The dark brown rings on the rotating abrasive wheel are from the “lapping swarf.” The swarf is a mixture of the newly-developed fluid and ceramic debris particles from the read-write head specimen. During the process, researchers add the fluid drop by drop onto the rotating wheel. Centripetal acceleration causes the swarf to move to the outer edge of the rotating wheel.

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant (award DMI 03-19794), awarded to Dr. John Lombardi of Ventana Research Corporation in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Lombardi received the award to develop high performance, environmentally benign lapping fluids for hard drive manufacturing applications. [This image is one of several related images; see also, Fluid Friendly Image 1 through 3 and Image 5 and 6.]

More about this Image:
Derived in part from green tea, a new biodegradable machining compound for computer hard drive manufacturing is three to four times more effective than toxic counterparts. Developed by NSF grantee Dr. John Lombardi of the Ventana Corporation, the new compound is part of a family of machining fluids that bind to polishing debris and rapidly remove tiny particles from the polishing surface. The fluids are critical because imperfections in read-write heads must be less than 10 angstroms high—larger defects can cause the head to crash into the disk, causing data loss.

Ventana formulates its fluid using a combination of synthetic proteins derived from common commercial chemicals and compounds extracted from green tea and other plants. Compared to many natural machining fluid compounds, which are often rare and expensive, the plant chemicals in the Ventana fluid are abundant and easily extractable. Those chemicals—the same ones responsible for forming tenacious stains in coffee pots and drinking mugs—grant the Ventana fluid its ability to bind to the particle debris formed while polishing read-write heads. According to Lombardi, the fluid’s possible biocompatibility and high affinity for ceramics and metals may lead to applications in wastewater treatment, where the compound could remove heavy metal contaminants from water, and medicine, where the compound may have advantages for delivering certain cancer treatments.

NSF awards SBIR grants to small businesses for risky, novel research with a potential for commercialization. Through SBIR and the related Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, NSF encourages partnerships between the small business and the academic sectors to develop a technology base for commercialization.

[This excerpt was taken from NSF Press Release PR 04-053, released April 19, 2004. The complete release is available at http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=80.

Fluid Friendly (Image 4)
(Preview Only)

Credit: Credit Erica von Koerber, Evon Photography (Tucson, Ariz.)
Year of Image: 2003

Categories:

MANUFACTURING
SBIR (Sm. Bus. Innov. Rsh.)

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Restrictions:

No additional restrictions--beyond NSF's general restrictions--have been placed on this image. For a list of general restrictions that apply to this and all images in the NSF Image Library, see the section "Conditions".

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Last Modified: Mar 29, 2001