Seals are used in almost all the industries including chemical, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, energy, construction, food and beverage, etc. Recently Argonne researchers and their partner Advance Diamond Technologies have developed a new much efficient mechanical pump seal.

The newly developed ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) mechanical seals, containing 2 to 5 nanometer dia. diamond grains on the surface, is found most reliable, durable and able to prevent the fluid from escaping to the environment and therefore can be suitably used as mechanical pump seals.

In addition to its study for various physico-chemical properties, researchers were also able to design its manufacturing technique so that UNCD can also be prepared at large scale. UNCD can also be utilized for various other applications including biodevices, microelectronics circuits, biosensors and nanoelectromechanical system devices.

Argonne with iplas developed ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) film production technology in the year 2002. As diamonds are very hard and very difficult to use them in the form of nanomaterial, a breakthrough in the manufacturing process was achieved and in future these highly efficient UNCD seals will replace less efficient silicon carbide seals.