Enbio | Ireland's Space Industry Directory

Overview

ENBIO provides surface coatings and treatments for structures used in a variety of industrial sectors. For space applications, ENBIO offer a suite of next-generation thermal control and stray light suppression coatings with extreme stability to radiation and thermal cycling – called SolarBlack, SuperBlack and SolarWhite.

In addition, ENBIO have developed a REACH-compliant chromate-free structural adhesive primer called SolarPrime for space and aerospace applications.

Artist’s impression of SolarOrbiter – Atlas V 411 rocket separation, showing the large primary heatshield. Credit: ESA.

Expertise

ENBIO is the inventor of a patented surface treatment process called CoBlast, which uniquely replaces a metals outer oxide layer with a tribo-chemically-bonded ‘dopant’ surface, effectively and permanently changing the chemistry of metal surfaces. Significantly, this metal surface functionalisation is achieved without the use of wet chemistry or thermal input, and is operated at both ambient temperature and pressure i.e. no vacuum is required, and thus there is no limit to substrate size.

Space coatings - Due to the nature of the CoBlast process ENBIO can produce purely inorganic coatings which bind directly to a material surface with no significant added mass. The absence of organic binders means that coatings do not degrade in the space environment, providing continued and stable thermal performance for extended periods, thus increasing operational lifetime of spacecraft.

Primer coatings - CoBlast technology also offers an environmentally friendly REACH compliant solution to current state-of-the-art chromate based technologies from priming metal surfaces prior to adhesive bonding. ENBIO have developed a next generation CoBlast primer which can surpass the strength of incumbent techniques while possessing the increased benefit of a greatly extended shelf-life post coating.

ENBIO provided expertise in testing and consultancy for thermal management of flight hardware for space.

Release coatings – The application of mould-release coatings using CoBlast offers significant advantages over incumbent techniques as it requires no wet chemistry, no recoating and no downtime for cleaning. Operational capacity and mould lifetime is therefore achieved.