Artemis industrial tech portfolio companies specialize in embedded technologies that contribute to a healthier, safer, and more productive world. In the Engineering Tomorrow series, we highlight some of these businesses and the vital end-markets they serve. Today we feature Artemis’ latest materials portfolio company, McDanel Advanced Material Technologies. Since 1919, McDanel has worked at the forefront on some of the most high-performance materials in existence. First steel, then evolving to technical ceramics, and most recently expanding to glass and sapphire technologies. This unique expertise has enabled McDanel to provide advanced material solutions for a range of applications driving the aerospace, defense, medical, industrials, R&D, and semiconductor markets forward. McDanel’s high purity Alumina, Mullite, Sialon, and fully stabilized Zirconia products are highly valued wherever applications demand a protective atmosphere, in corrosive environments, at high temperatures without contamination. 

McDanel Materials
Alumina is a hard, chemically resistant material that can withstand very high temperatures in aggressive environments. McDanel offers Alumina with various purity levels (98.9%-99%) that can be used at operating temperatures to 1750°C in both oxidizing and reducing atmospheres. Alumina is used in noble metal thermocouple protection and across a wide variety of tubes, furnace rollers, and ozone generators. 

Mullite offers excellent performance up to 1500°C. It is a refractory oxide material combining low thermal expansion, good mechanical strength, and resilience at elevated temperatures. The various grades of McDanel Mullite are formulated to produce dense, impervious shapes, with optimized thermal shock resistance and strength. This extremely versatile and economical material is frequently used in insulators and thermocouple sheaths, base metal thermocouples, furnace muffle tubes and liners, and kiln rollers. 

McDanel’s Sialon ST withstands temperatures up to 1000°C. It is a ceramic alloy that exhibits a combination of the properties of both silicon nitride (high strength, hardness, fracture toughness, and thermal shock resistance) and alumina (refractoriness, corrosion resistance, and oxidation resistance). Sialon ST is uniquely qualified for use in molten non-ferrous metal applications and is often embedded in thermocouple sheaths, heater protection, and low-pressure stalk tubes.

Yttria-stabilized Zirconia is an excellent oxygen ion conductor used in oxygen and carbon sensors. It offers refractoriness at temperatures up to and above 2000°C. From general purpose grade to 100% tested for hydrothermal stability, McDanel Zirconia is fine grained, high density, and fully stabilized. Typical uses include oxygen sensors, thermocouple protection tubes, furnace muffles, liners, and crucibles. 

Application Overview
The demand for components that are pure, precise, and top performing in extreme environments continues to flourish in the high-growth markets that rely on McDanel technologies. In the aerospace industry, ceramic components ensure the integrity of crucial cooling channels in mission critical parts deployed in extremely harsh environments. Due to their lightweight, exceptionally hard, durable, heat and corrosion-resistant nature, McDanel ceramics are also incorporated into many Defense manufacturing processes and systems that go toward protecting our country. 

Many medical industry applications such as laser surgery tools utilize McDanel solutions, particularly for components that must withstand high-energy laser beams because they maintain structural integrity and optical properties under harsh conditions. Likewise, McDanel materials, products, and solutions are embedded in ultrasonic transducers and sensors for medical imaging and diagnostic equipment.

Reliable thermal performance and precision is necessary for parts used in the high-temperature wafer processing furnaces that drive the semiconductor market. In the manufacturing and research industries, McDanel ceramics routinely outperform traditional metallic materials in components that are subjected to abrasive wear, high stress, and friction in a variety of manufacturing and laboratory processes.

McDanel delivers pure, precise, and high-performing material solutions.  Their capacity for customization at every scale, legacy of innovation and rigor, and unparalleled expertise with cylindrical ceramics make McDanel products indispensable for the no-fail industries and applications that consistently advance the frontiers of human health, mobility, connectivity, and security. 

McDanel Optics glass and sapphire materials will be explored in an upcoming post.