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Six sectors we know from the inside.

Domain knowledge is not a nice-to-have in materials work. Knowing which failure modes are common, which standards a customer will audit against and which explanations have already been tried is most of the speed advantage.

SECTOR 01

Semiconductors & microelectronics

Where a 40 nm film decides a $40 m quarter.

Front-end and back-end problems where the material, not the design, is the variable that moved.

Semiconductor problems are unforgiving because the signal is buried in a process with hundreds of steps and enormous lot-to-lot noise. We are usually brought in when a yield excursion has survived the standard 8D process and the correlation analysis has produced three plausible suspects and no decision.

What we work on

  • Thin-film adhesion, stress and delamination in interconnect stacks
  • Organic and metallic contamination: source identification and transport path
  • Wafer-level and package-level warpage from CTE mismatch
  • Underfill, moulding compound and die-attach material qualification
  • Wire bond and solder joint intermetallic growth
  • Moisture sensitivity level failures and popcorning

Standards we work to

JEDEC JESD22 and J-STD-020, AEC-Q100 and Q006 for automotive parts, IPC-9701 for solder attach reliability, SEMI standards for materials and contamination control.

Yield excursion Contamination Package stress Intermetallics MSL

SECTOR 02

Solar & photovoltaics

A 25-year warranty backed by a 3-year test.

Module degradation is where materials science meets an uncomfortably long financial commitment.

Most PV field failures are not cell failures. They are encapsulant, backsheet, interconnect and sealant failures — polymer and interface problems wearing a semiconductor badge. That is squarely materials work, and it is rarely resolved by the module-level testing the standards require.

What we work on

  • Encapsulant discolouration, delamination and acetic acid generation
  • Backsheet cracking and hydrolytic degradation
  • Potential-induced degradation: mechanism and mitigation
  • Cell metallisation adhesion and ribbon interconnect fatigue
  • Junction box adhesion and edge seal moisture ingress
  • Correlating accelerated damp-heat results with real field data

Standards we work to

IEC 61215 and IEC 61730 for module qualification and safety, IEC 62804 for PID, IEC TS 63126 for high-temperature operation, and extended-stress sequences beyond the standard where the warranty demands it.

Encapsulants PID Backsheets Damp heat Field returns

SECTOR 03

Batteries & energy storage

Coin cells lie. Packs tell the truth.

The gap between a promising material and a shipping cell is where most energy-storage programmes lose two years.

Electrolyte-to-electrode ratio, stack pressure, thermal gradients and electrode areal loading are all absent or unrepresentative in coin-cell testing — and all four dominate cycle life and safety at pack scale. We work the manufacturing and degradation problems that only appear once the format is real.

What we work on

  • Capacity fade attribution: lithium inventory loss versus active material loss
  • SEI and CEI formation, electrolyte decomposition and gas evolution
  • Electrode slurry rheology, coating defects and calendering effects
  • Binder and conductive additive selection and dispersion
  • Lithium plating detection and fast-charge protocol limits
  • Thermal runaway propagation and abuse-tolerance materials

Standards we work to

UN 38.3 for transport, IEC 62660 and ISO 12405 for automotive cells, UL 1642 and UL 2580, and customer-specific cycle-life protocols that usually matter more than any of them.

Capacity fade Gas evolution Coating defects Li plating Safety

SECTOR 04

Specialty chemicals

It worked in the flask.

Reaction development, impurity control and the scale-up that behaves nothing like the laboratory promised.

Specialty chemical problems tend to be either an impurity nobody can identify or a transport limitation nobody has quantified. Both are tractable; both are routinely misdiagnosed as "operator variation". We also do a growing amount of substitution work driven by regulation rather than performance.

What we work on

  • Impurity identification, origin tracking and fate through the process
  • Reaction kinetics, calorimetry and thermal safety assessment
  • Mixing, mass transfer and residence-time distribution at scale
  • Crystallisation: polymorph control, habit and particle size distribution
  • Solvent selection and replacement under green chemistry constraints
  • PFAS, biocide and restricted-substance reformulation

Standards and frameworks

REACH and CLP, GHS classification, ICH Q3 impurity thresholds where the product touches pharma supply chains, and the twelve principles of green chemistry as a design constraint rather than a marketing line.

Impurities Scale-up Crystallisation Thermal safety REACH

SECTOR 05

Adhesives, sealants & coatings

Adhesion is a surface problem wearing a chemistry costume.

Nine times in ten, an adhesion failure is a surface preparation failure that passed incoming inspection.

Bond performance is set at the interface, in the first few nanometres, often hours before the adhesive is applied. Contamination, oxide age, mould release residue and inconsistent plasma or flame treatment cause more field delamination than any adhesive formulation defect. We work the interface first and the bulk chemistry second.

What we work on

  • Adhesive versus cohesive failure mode determination and surface analysis
  • Surface energy, contact angle and treatment process control
  • Cure kinetics, degree of cure and the effect of real line conditions
  • Bond-line thickness control, voids and fillet geometry
  • Durability under humidity, thermal cycling and sustained load
  • Substrate compatibility and stress-cracking of thermoplastics

Standards we work to

ASTM D1002, D3163 and D3762 for shear and wedge testing, ASTM D1876 for T-peel, ISO 4587 and ISO 9142 for durability exposure, and the accelerated ageing sequences your OEM customer actually applies.

Adhesion failure Surface prep Cure kinetics Durability Bond line

SECTOR 06

Composites & advanced structures

The laminate is only as good as its worst ply.

Process-induced defects, not design allowables, are what usually take a composite structure out of service.

Composite manufacturing has a wide gap between the theoretical laminate and the one that comes out of the autoclave. Porosity, resin-rich zones, fibre waviness and incomplete cure are all invisible on a drawing and all decisive for interlaminar strength and fatigue life.

What we work on

  • Porosity and void content: origin, quantification and acceptance limits
  • Cure cycle development, exotherm control and residual stress
  • Resin infusion and RTM flow-front behaviour and dry spots
  • Interlaminar shear strength and delamination resistance
  • Composite-to-metal joints: galvanic corrosion, CTE mismatch, bolt bearing
  • Environmental conditioning and hot-wet knockdown factors

Standards we work to

ASTM D2734 and D3171 for void and constituent content, D2344 for short-beam shear, D5528 and D7905 for fracture toughness, D7136 for impact, and the CMH-17 handbook framework for allowables generation.

Porosity Cure cycle Delamination Joints Hot-wet
“We had three teams with three theories and a customer escalation. GreenChemX eliminated two of them in eleven days, which is the only reason we made the recovery window.”
Director of Quality Photovoltaic module manufacturer · encapsulant delamination investigation

Your sector not listed?

These six are where we have the deepest domain knowledge, not the limit of what we can work on. If the problem is a material behaving unexpectedly, it is worth a conversation.

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