SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga Springs-based company Free Form Fibers has received a pair of Small Business Innovation Research awards from the Department of the Navy and Air Force Research Laboratory.
Free Form develops high performance ceramic fibers, the company’s website states. The Navy contract is a Phase II award, and will see Free Form Fibers continue developing silicon nitride fibers, said CEO Shay Harrison.
He said the fibers can be utilized to protect interrogation equipment in hypersonic vehicles, naming jets, missiles, and drones as examples.
“This material, silicon nitride, is good for handling very high temperatures, but it also has the right electromagnetic properties, which means it transmits out the wavelength of the interrogation equipment,” said Harrison. “So it can send out signal and receive signal back.”
The company had previously completed Phase I, Harrison said, with Phase II entailing scaling up production and testing the fibers in proper environments.
“So when a jet is going Mach 5, Mach 8, you’re talking about temperatures that are 2,000 degrees Celsius,” Harrison said. “So we need to get some data about how the fibers work in the parts that are going to be used for this.”
Free Form’s contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory also deals with hypersonic vehicles, Harrison said, and is a Direct-to-Phase II SBIR Award. He said the company was able to receive the Direct-to-Phase II distinction as a result of the company’s past work with the U.S. Department of Energy.
“So we were able to leverage what we had done several years ago with the Department of Energy and translate it to this concept for cooling for these hypersonic vehicles,” said Harrison. “Basically, they’re looking for different ways to cool those really fast vehicles.”
Harrison said the contracts are meaningful, noting the company is transitioning to commercial manufacturing. Founded in 2006, Free Form Fibers originally operated in research and development, he said.
“We were a really good research and development shop for many years, and we decided about two, two and a half years ago, we’re ready to move out of that stage and become a manufacturer,” Harrison said. “We definitely had a great deal of credibility as an R&D shop, and we’ve been able to get through some doors because of that. Now it’s building that credibility as a manufacturer.”
He said the grant awards from the Navy and Air Force can allow the company to develop products that could then be included in commercial supply chains.
“We are working on the largest number of grants and grant revenue, right now, in our company’s history,” said Harrison. “… So this is another step in that commercialization process, but a really important one, because these are important things that needed to be solved, and they are trusting us to solve the challenge.”
Harrison noted the company has increased its production capacity in order to meet demand. He said it is exciting to see the company’s shift to commercial manufacturing.
“It’s very cool to be at this point, and seeing what we thought would be of interest to folks, with the purity of the materials and the different types of materials that we could make,” Harrison said. “It’s fun to be part of that process.”
