Ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are a vital material for improvement of efficiency in future aircraft engines, enabling higher turbine temperatures and offering the advantages of significantly lower weight, lower cooling requirements and lower aircraft emissions. The rate of introduction of these new materials can be improved by raising the predictability of material strength, enabling design engineers to have a greater degree of confidence in the life of the material. Interface coatings on fibre reinforcements are one of the critical components of CMCs and control of these coatings with tight tolerances is vital for ensuring reliable properties. Current batch coating methods only give a relatively low level of uniformity control. Complex components can show coating thickness variations, limiting the predictability of performance. This 'CICSiC' project aims to develop the coating technology, a novel prototype machine design and a UK based manufacturing partnership for the equipment which will coat the reinforcing silicon carbide (SiC) fibre for SiC based CMCs in a continuous mode. This mode will enable tight coating tolerance by treating the fibre before it is shaped into a thicker and complex shaped component preform where it becomes difficult to process all areas of the component with equal precision. There is significant global demand for this technology amongst customers of ATL (project lead) including engine manufacturers and component developers, as recent developments in the US have enabled GE Aviation to gain a competitive advantage. This project aims to enable technology to be developed and sold to a world market from a UK base. Customers of the planned product are keen to push the development through and understand the properties of the material produced by this new process. The project will take the existing batch coating process and apply knowledge from that to design and build prototype equipment which coats a moving SiC fibre on a continuous basis. Fibre handling expertise will be drawn both from SMEs and a research centre to form a knowledge base from which a production scale multi-tow plant is designed ready for manufacturing at the end of the project. End users of the coated fibre, including the German company now setting up the only SiC fibre plant outside Japan and the US, will form part of the consortium's test regime for the coated fibre to ensure it meets industrial requirements.

The application of Tantalum coatings is a solution to coating performance across numerous industries and high value markets. For example; in the chemical industry corrosion is a limiting factor with broad implications such as safety, costs and material usage. The project includes Dow Corning as the IEU in need of a solution to corrosion in chlorine based chemical plants; Cranfield University as an academic partner with expertise in corrosion testing and Archer Technicoat Ltd. as the coating developer based on over 30 years' experience in vapour deposited coating solutions. The project aims to develop an integrated approach to coating and component design for manufacture via an optimised deposition processes. The chemical vapour deposition process to be used is scale-up of a lab-scale process developed by ATL towards commercial geometries to be validated through application specific testing and analysis using innovative characterisation tools. The project will generate products with enhanced performance through a process that can enable coating of geometries and internal surfaces other methods cannot, offering savings in both cost and usage of a limited resource.

The project is to develop a process and the basis for a UK facility for coating components with zirconium diboride by chemical vapour deposition. This ultra-high temperature ceramic has applications in the generation of solar power and the protection of ceramic composites for hypersonic and space vehicles. For ceramic composites it is seen as a new exterior coating material which can combine with existing silicon carbide (SiC) coatings to extend the temperature range at which SiC based composites can operate. It is therefore being aimed at hypersonic vehicles and missiles as well as thermal protection systems for space applications. In the solar power field it has the additional advantage of being a good absorber of solar radiation which can improve the efficiency of power conversion in the volumetric solar receivers of solar energy generators. The project aims to produce small demonstration pieces which can be used both for material tests and as a proof of principle for scale up of the process to larger components.