Advanced Technology

New hard coatings with superior performance

Duralar has developed an entirely new class of hard coatings that is unprecedented in the industry. These provide new levels of hardness and wear resistance as well as corrosion and erosion resistance. One new coating combines exceptional hardness with dry lubrication. The remarkable new Duralar technologies create whole new market segments and often fill the voids between traditional technical thin film coatings and the hard chrome plating and alternative markets. Duralar coatings offer important new advantages both in performance and price; they may be applied rapidly and they are environmentally friendly!

Metal + diamond: a unique hard coating technology

One of Duralar’s important coating developments is a proprietary and uniquely structured nanocomposite coating that blends metal and diamond-based components to achieve exceptional hardness, toughness, strength and a broad range of performance qualities. It is comprised of multiple layers that can be configured in different ways to address different applications. The multiple layers are also effective for eliminating microcracks in the coating and blocking other problems like corrosion.

Because Duralar coatings are not sprayed coating they do not have the limitations that are usually associated with line-of-sight application. Instead, Duralar coatings are highly conformal and uniform, which makes them well suited to coating three-dimensional features. They give very consistent coverage, even on screw threads and intricately shaped features which can be challenging for many other coating methods.

Also, Duralar coatings do not require extremely high deposition temperatures, so they do not alter the morphology of substrates and work well on a broad range of substrate materials.

The performance of Duralar coatings now opens new possibilities for a spectrum of industries and applications. The coatings’ hardness, toughness, corrosion and erosion resistance and other advanced features combined with speed and ease of application now enable their use in many applications that previously were not technically or economically feasible.

Proprietary InnerArmor™ coating technology

InnerArmor™ coating technology, originally developed by Duralar’s Sub-One subsidiary for coating interior surfaces, is a further extension of our metal coating capabilities. It is particularly useful for coating the insides of industrial pipes and other tubular parts. InnerArmor technology extends the available coating thickness range and is ideally suited for numerous applications in oil & gas, chemical processing, armament, automotive and many other industries.

Proprietary DualArmor™ coating technology

Duralar’s Emperion is a Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) system that employs a proprietary Duralar “hollow cathode” technique called DualArmor™. This unique process creates a field of high-energy electrons and bathes the parts in an ultra-high intensity plasma — over 200 times greater than a standard plasma — that effectively covers all part geometries, both exterior and interior. This allows parts to be coated at an unprecedented high rate. During the process, high-energy ionized gases also clean the parts and create an optimized adhesive bond before the coating is deposited. The DualArmor process eliminates the line-of-sight limitations that spray-type coatings have. Since all deposition occurs within the dense plasma, all part surfaces — including complex 3D shapes such as screw threads — are coated with high uniformity, eliminating the need for post-processing.