Get off to a flying start with ultra-hard coatings

Spun off from the Laser Institute at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences (LHM) two years ago, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, ANTACON GmbH is hitting the ground running at the start of the year with a growth investment in the seven-figure euro range. Impressed by the four founders, their product and its market prospects, Gigahertz Ventures GmbH and the investment companies of the Sparkasse banks in Dresden, Chemnitz and the Vogtland region are investing in ANTACON’s continued growth.

Good ideas need a place to be tested and developed. Mittweida University of Applied Sciences is just such a place, offering a favourable environment for researching and developing technologies – and also for taking the step of founding a start-up based on a good idea.

This is the experience the three founders of ANTACON have had in recent years. Hagen Grüttner, David Haldan and Johannes Maus are graduates of Mittweida University of Applied Sciences and, after completing their studies at the university’s Laser Institute, conducted research into extremely hard and wear-resistant carbon coatings for high-stress tools – the likes of which had not previously been available on the market. Tools produced using the process developed in Mittweida can be used up to ten times longer. The three founded their company in 2021 and have successfully developed it further under the umbrella of Mittweida University of Applied Sciences. ANTACON GmbH won the TUClab Start-up Competition in 2021 and the IQ Innovation Award for Central Germany in 2022. ANTACON was among the top 10 start-ups at the 2022 Saxony Start-up Award.

ANTACON Managing Director Hagen Grüttner says: “The conditions at the LHM have been ideal for us over the past few years. Without the expertise and support of the scientists there, and the technical resources, we would not be where we are today.” Now comes the growth investment from Gigahertz Ventures and the three Saxon savings banks. Sven Sieber of Gigahertz Ventures has been supporting the four founders for some time now: “Given the team’s long-standing technological expertise and the unique positioning of the new company’s products in the market, we have decided to take a financial stake as an investor.”

“The challenge we are addressing is the wear and tear of tools and components in industrial settings, which incurs enormous costs either directly through the need for new purchases or indirectly through production downtime. The economic damage resulting from this is estimated at around 35 billion euros in Germany alone,” said Grüttner. “With our coating, tools can be used five to ten times longer. This leads to a maximum increase in service life, particularly in metalworking but also in other sectors such as the optical and pharmaceutical industries, and thus to unprecedented cost savings and process reliability.”

By way of comparison: hardened steel has a hardness of 8 gigapascals, whilst a diamond has a hardness of 100 gigapascals. ANTACON’s so-called DLC coatings (‘Diamond-Like Carbon’) come very close to this ‘ideal value’, with a hardness of up to 70 gigapascals. They are produced by using high-energy laser irradiation to extract carbon (graphite) and apply it to the component.

‘Competitors currently only offer coatings with a maximum layer hardness of up to 50 gigapascals. But hardness isn’t everything: the coatings must withstand extreme conditions in use without flaking off the tool. That was, and remains, the real challenge. Due to the high internal stress in the super-hard layers, they tend to flake off easily. We reduce this internal stress using a second laser beam. This is what sets ANTACON coatings apart. “With our process, these coatings not only offer extreme hardness but also exceptional resilience in extreme operating environments, which is what makes certain applications possible in the first place,” Grüttner continued.

When children grow up, they eventually leave home. The same is true of ANTACON GmbH, which is leaving Schillerberg in Mittweida following the expiry of funding from the EXIST Research Transfer programme and will move to the old cotton mill in the Zschopau Valley in April. There is also space there to expand to accommodate up to 20 staff members in the coming years. Initially, two large-scale production runs are to be produced on a contract manufacturing basis for pilot customers. In the medium term, ANTACON aims to make its technology available to other companies and thus expand its business.