OKFORD, UK - Beckers Industrial Coatings Holdings AB and MatOx Oy have entered into a three-year research and development collaboration. Under the terms of the agreement, MatOx will use computational approaches to design new and unique coatings products with controllable functionality, which Beckers will have the option to bring to market.
 
MatOx Oy, the wholly owned Finnish subsidiary of UK-based materials discovery company MatOx Ltd., is working with academics at Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) to develop and apply computational modeling and simulation in the design of new materials. The work will be carried out at COMP, a national Centre of Excellence for Computational Nanoscience at TKK.
 
MatOx will make this capability available to Beckers under the terms of the collaboration agreement and execute several projects targeting coatings with, for example, self-cleaning behavior or physical properties that change in response to external stimuli. Both parties will share in the value realized through sales of products that result from the collaboration.
 
"Computational modeling and simulation approaches offer the possibility to design new materials at the atomic level with tailored bulk properties and to do so more quickly and cost effectively than with conventional experimental techniques alone," observes Jason D. King, MatOx's CEO.