Stay Clean!

As of august 2025 Naco has moved its innovation center to newly renovated facilities. The new premises not only include renovated office for its researchers and a new chemistry lab, but also a clean room for the RnD batch coater.

But what is a clean room? As we all know there are two effective mechanisms of controlling the dirt around us – we can clean our surroundings, or we can do our best to avoid contaminating them in the first place. A clean room works on the latter principle. Strict entrance rules limit the number of particles that are carried inside, proper substrate handling practices and specific cleaning of the surfaces allow Naco to maintain the particle count 100 times lower inside the cleanroom compared to the office just nearby.

Such reduction of the particles is critical for the quality of the coatings that Naco makes a 0.5µm particle – ten times smaller than the average human hair can be still ten times bigger then the nano-coating’s that are made by Naco researchers. Therefore, reduction of any potential mechanical contaminant will improve the quality of the nano-coatings.

In the end a clean room is more than just a clean space, it is also a state of the mind when it comes to assuring that the best practices for highest quality are met!

The clean room has two overpressure areas - the main room has 20-30 Pa overpressure, and the entrance has 10-15 Pa overpressure both rooms are separated by the air shower. The overpressure is high enough to direct the particle flow outwards from the main clean room, and low enough not to cause any health issues for the researchers. Such cascade principle allows Naco to aim at ISO7 class – and the first particle measurements show that we are there!

Inside the cleanroom currently sits the NACO600 PVD coater – the platform used for developing protective and catalytic coatings. The coater has quite unique geometrical features that allow Naco to work with substrates of various shapes, sizes and even types of materials.

Naco are working on coatings for metallic plates, metallic-mesh based substrates, ceramic substrates and even Nafion membranes. The coater has four magnetron sputtering stations, each containing two magnetrons. The floor area of Naco clean room is 90m² with enough room to add at least one more deposition system in the future to increase the research capacities.