Teer Coatings Limited (TCL), Miba Coating Group TCL employs 59 staff in Droitwich, UK. Founded in 1985 TCL was taken over by Miba AG in April, 2010 and is now an integral part of the Miba Coating Group. In total Miba is a >€500M turnover, 3800 employee, international company, headquartered in Austria. TCL’s main activity is advanced Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) surface coatings for many applications, deposited primarily, but not exclusively, by magnetron sputtering. Its quality system is ISO 9001:2008 certified. TCL’s strategy is continual investment in modern equipment and R&D, maintaining a worldwide lead in thin film coating technology, which is then exploited commercially. TCL pioneered Closed Field Unbalanced Magnetron Sputter Ion Plating (CFUBMSIP) technology and its key intellectual property, covering both technology & coatings, is protected by patents. TCL has a proven track record of innovation & successful industrial production at the cutting edge of Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) technology. For Hydrogen and Fuel Cell applications, TCL offers a proven ability to deposit relevant thin film coatings, including electrically conductive, corrosion resistant films, catalytic materials, etc. onto a variety of substrates and components, from bipolar plates to particulate catalyst supports. TCL is also engaged in collaborative R&D including photovoltaics and the generation of size-selected nano-clusters, as well as its more traditional development of low friction and wear resistant coatings for engineering surfaces.

TCL has over 14 PVD batch coating machines to supply its contract coating customers. A further 16 coating units are dedicated to coating development and research. In 2010 TCL acquired an industrial PVD, load-locked in line coating system as part of its contribution to the future Low Carbon Economy industrial supply chain, which will allow the company to investigate semi-continuous, air-to-air processing. TCL has a well-equipped Testing Laboratory, able to characterise the deposited coatings, particularly in respect of their physical attributes, tribological properties, etc. In additional to conventional hardness testing and optical microscopy, TCL has a NanoTest instrument for nanoindentation and nanohardness measurements.

The main tasks attributed and previous experiences
Teer Coatings Limited will be responsible for the development of low cost, long life, protective and electrically conductive coatings for the electrolyser bipolar plates and current collectors, exploiting its state of the art physical vapour deposition technology. TEER has almost 30 years’ experience in the development of high performance thin film coatings for “engineering” applications.TEER has the demonstrated ability to transfer its PVD processes from research into industrial production, and will ensure that the requirements for compatibility with downstream (and upstream) processing of the components are met, and that the capability and potential for scale-up/cost down of the chosen coatings. TEER is currently a partner in the UK Technology Strategy Board projects HydroGEN, which is developing an alkaline electrolyser and NECLASS, which seeks to improve the utilisation of PGM in PEMFC membranes and is also working in three other national projects to develop low cost, metal oxide based photovoltaics, for electricity generation, direct water-splitting, and photocatalytic antimicrobial coatings for the food and brewing industry

For more information, please visit:

http://www.teercoatings.co.uk/