Founded in 2011, ACS Material has grown rapidly by offering high quality products and superior customer service. Their goal is to support research and industry by providing a wide range of materials with nanometer characteristics. Since 2018, the company has expanded their focus by offering lab equipment that creates, uses or measures materials with nano-characteristics, so that they can further support customer-base.
Interview with Richard Ploss, CEO of ACS Material.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Richard Ploss: ACS is increasingly active in the area of customized solutions that solve specific customer problems. Our labs can refine product formulations, perform analyses of various physical characteristics to prove the value of the refinements, and scale up the production of proven formulations. For onsite equipment, our products are designed to maximize uptime, use minimal resources including bench space and provide long term trouble-free service.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
R.P: Our most recently released product, designed and manufactured by our sister company, ACS Thermal LLC, is the ThermalSure® thermal diffusivity analysis instrument. The novel technology was developed over many years by one of the major contributors to the field of thermal testing and is incorporated into this easy-to-use device. It is now possible to test very small samples (1 mm) for thermal diffusivity with high accuracy. The test procedure can be performed by lower level technicians and requires very little time per sample, saving expensive resources. Another product that we will be releasing very soon is the FlashVolt® 2D material generator. This device will produce high quality 2D powders from almost any source by raising the autoclave temperature to as much as 3000°C in under 10 seconds. This atomizes the sample, thus releasing the chemical bonds, and by careful cooling encourages the formation 2-dimensional crystals in flake form. We recommend this technology to any organization that needs a steady local source of high quality 2D powders.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
R.P: ACS can provide a very wide range of products to the active research lab or the manufacturing unit. Our customers tell us that the availability of so many different types of materials with nano-scale characteristics allows them to experiment with the myriad of possible combinations and discover new capabilities. ACS is known for its innovations and especially so for the Trivial Transfer® family of products. We developed a method of production that allows us to ship graphene (in 1-, 2-, 3~5-, and 6~8-layers) without an attached substrate so that the customer can experiment with graphene sheets without worrying about etching the copper away. This does two very important things: experiments that use graphene, often involving electronics, are greatly sped up by eliminating the smelly etching procedures, and; sending prototypes of wafers to a distant lab to cover circuitry with graphene is no longer necessary, so your intellectual property (the circuitry itself) stays safe in your own lab. The TT® products are very powerful enhancements to the lab’s toolkit. In addition to graphene, which is highly conductive but has no hole, we offer hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) in TT® format so that you can assemble an atomically thick transistor by sandwiching TThBN® between two sheets of TTG® very easily. It may also be possible to experiment with a magic angle between graphene and hBN using these products. It is our intent to continue to expand the TT® product family, with MoS2 and more.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
R.P: Our estimation of the market for our products shows a very positive upward curve. We believe that the number of applications for several of our principal products is increasing rapidly and demand from our customers is verifying that curve. We will build on our successful product families and continue to innovate and introduce novel ideas into the conversations we have with our customers. Since we have developed a strong international brand name, we have managed to avoid some of the negative forces that have overstressed many other companies in our domain.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
R.P: The many innovative products that we offer include our TT® family of products as described above, the ThermalSure thermal diffusivity analyzer and the FlashVolt 2D material generator.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
R.P: We project a rising revenue curve for 2023 and 2024, despite some of the headwinds that many are facing. We believe that innovators will always attract attention and commerce, so we base our confidence on our ability to find new ways to do things and introduce new things to lead the way.