A new chemical vapor deposition system is expanding the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering’s advanced manufacturing capabilities. Importantly, the system will deepen collaborations with industry partners who want to apply the college’s innovative shock-absorbing carbon nanotube materials in their products.
Carbon cylinders just one atom thick in each layer, carbon nanotubes have exceptional mechanical and thermal properties. They’re also very lightweight, making them attractive materials for a variety of applications, including those that require impact protection.
The new system—essentially a large, specialized furnace used to produce carbon nanotubes—is housed in Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Ramathasan Thevamaran’s lab.
The new equipment, which began operating in March 2026, will allow Thevamaran to ramp up his collaboration with helmet maker Team Wendy to develop ultra-shock-absorbing carbon nanotube foam helmet liners that can provide superior protection against concussions. This research is part of PANTHER, a UW-Madison-led interdisciplinary research initiative focused on developing better technologies for detecting, understanding and preventing traumatic brain injuries.
In recent years, Thevamaran’s research group has pioneered carbon nanotube foams with carefully structured architectures, and has demonstrated their extraordinary shock-absorbing properties. Now, Thevamaran will leverage the new system to scale up the synthesis of these materials, creating foams of about 4 inches in diameter.
“This capability will allow us to manufacture more than one pad for a helmet liner at once, and with these larger samples, we can greatly speed up the testing and qualification process for these materials,” Thevamaran says. “This large-scale synthesis system readily enables industrial collaboration, whether it’s with Team Wendy or with other companies. It brings the technology a big step closer to real-world applications.”
Thevamaran is excited to establish and grow collaborations with additional industry partners. He says companies have been interested in using carbon nanotubes in their products, but his lab couldn’t create material samples at the pace and scale needed to enable meaningful industry testing. The new system, which is one of only a handful at academic institutions in the country, solves those challenges, allowing Thevamaran’s lab to support companies’ research and development efforts.
In addition, Thevamaran plans to use the system to fabricate large-scale, ultra-lightweight composite materials for aerospace applications. “In challenging environmental conditions such as extreme hot or cold temperatures, these materials can maintain exceptional shock-and vibration-absorbing properties, making them useful for lightweight composites for spacecraft,” he says.
Thevamaran is the Bernard A. and Frances M. Weideman Associate Professor in mechanical engineering.
This research and the chemical vapor deposition system is funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research under the PANTHER program.
Featured image caption: Postdoctoral researcher Ara Kim (right) and graduate student Lasantha Weerasekara use the new chemical vapor deposition system. Photo: Joel Hallberg.