Meta Materials Continues on Acquisitions Trail

Meta Materials Inc, a developer of high-performance functional materials and nanocomposites, announced it has acquired Plasma App Ltd (PAL), in a stock for stock transaction valued at $20 million.

PAL, located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxford (UK), is the developer of PLASMAfusion™, a proprietary manufacturing platform technology, which enables high speed coating of any solid material on any type of substrate. The move follows Meta’s successful acquisition of Nanotech Security Corp in October 2021 (see HN August 2021).

Meta expects to apply PLASMAfusion to the metallisation step in its roll-to-roll production process for NANOWEB® films, as well as KolourOptik® security films. This is expected to significantly accelerate line speed and increase annual capacity. Large scale and efficient metallisation are a critical step for volume production of NANOWEB and many other high volume potential applications requiring hundreds of millions of square metres per year.

Large scale metallisation is expected to leverage capital equipment investment and substantially reduce cost per square meter of output.

‘This is a strategic acquisition for Meta, pairing the best nanopatterning technologies with the best coating technology. PLASMAfusion is a versatile coating platform technology, which we believe will improve our existing manufacturing processes, expand our IP portfolio, and open new markets,’ said George Palikaras, President and CEO of Meta.

'As we scale our operations, Meta is committed to investing in more sustainable technologies that reduce cost and increase volumes of our metamaterial applications,’ he added.

According to the company, PLASMAfusion uniquely combines the benefits of sputtering and evaporation, while using zero VOCs (volatile organic compounds). PAL’s technology works in a more sustainable, customisable, and efficient way, by producing new materials in vacuum at low substrate temperatures with higher adhesion.

Meta intends to continue to industrialise and scale up PLASMAfusion, including applications for its high volume factory in Thurso, Quebec. Additionally, PLASMAfusion will be available for licensing and co-development for strategic partners.

‘PAL’s technology creates unprecedented new high- performance nanocomposites in real time, by using multiple, time sequenced targets. We believe this is a unique process enabler, likely to facilitate Meta’s entry into multiple high- growth markets,’ said Jonathan Waldern, Chief Technology Officer. ‘High energy beam deposition of materials, at low temperature, without solvents and other toxic chemicals is a major breakthrough’.