Fiber Phenomenon

Magellan Systems hopes its M5 "super fiber" will bolster the Richmond region's reputation as the world's leading center of innovation in the advanced materials industry.

by James A. Bacon

Between the flags and bunting, the elected officials giving speeches, and the executives mugging for the camera while engaging in an uncharacteristic shoveling of dirt, ceremonial ground breakings are an odd American ritual. But at the dedication of the new Magellan Systems International facility in Chesterfield County this August, the hoopla seemed entirely appropriate – especially when CEO Gene Vetter stood before a draped American flag and proclaimed his intention to preserve U.S. dominance in the high-strength fiber industry against formidable Japanese competition.

The defense department craves M5 for use in aerospace applications and body armor for its Objective Force warrior-of-the-future program. Eventually, the fiber will find applications in everything from fire suits to helicopter blades, from satellites to tennis racquets and golf clubs.

Vetter’s fervent, patriotic desire is to recapture business that has migrated overseas. In his view, there are two world-class clusters in the high-performance fiber industry. One is in Osaka, Japan, the other in Richmond, Va. The Japanese are vying for recognition as the world leader. “We at Magellan,” says Vetter, “want to … take back the title for Richmond.”

Vetter established the company's research and manufacturing facilities in Richmond because of the region’s “reputation for excellence in the development of high-strength fibers. … No other locality in the U.S. would provide us access to this experience base.” Only a few miles from the Magellan plant, Dupont’s Advanced Fiber Systems conducts R&D, product development and manufacturing in advanced fibers. Its premier brand names include Kevlar® and Nomex®. Likewise, the Richmond metro area is home to Honeywell Performance Products, manufacturer of Spectra high-strength fiber and various specialty fibers. More than a dozen companies manufacture specialty chemicals in the region, lending tremendous depth to the pool of chemical engineering and manufacturing talent.

Another advantage is the presence, just up the Interstate, of the Pentagon, an early adopter – and one of the world’s largest customers -- of high-performance fibers. The Naval Surface Warfare labs outside Fredericksburg and the NASA Langley aerospace research center in Hampton, both federal labs located within a short driving distance, are researching high-performance materials for use in naval and aerospace applications. Meanwhile, there is a wealth of academic expertise in polymer science at chemistry and chemical-engineering programs at Virginia universities.

Vetter expects to build a strong R&D program to continue pushing performance limits, but for now the top priority is figuring out how to produce M5 fiber efficiently. The super-strong fiber presents unique manufacturing challenges. “Traditional equipment can’t stand up to the fiber,” says Daniel Miller, general manager of Dienes Apparatus, an equipment supplier working with Magellan. “The fiber won’t give – the steel gives.”

Magellan is housing a bench-scale lab at its 30,000-square-foot facility to tweak the fiber for different characteristics and soon will complete building a pilot plant to ramp up production. DuPont, an investor in Magellan, is collaborating in designing the manufacturing process. “DuPont brings a lot of design expertise,” says Vetter. “They’ve been doing high-strength fiber production for years.”

Ultimately, Vetter expects to bring a total of 200 research and manufacturing jobs to the Richmond region. And that’s just the beginning, suggests Gene Winter, senior vice president of the Greater Richmond Partnership, the Richmond region’s economic development organization. Magellan, he predicts, will be the first of many new businesses to choose the region.

“Richmond is a world-class center for innovation in advanced materials,” Winter says. “Globally, industry is poised to develop a fantastic array of new technologies, from high-strength fibers like M5 to ‘smart’ materials embedded with fiber-optic sensors that will change the material basis of our world in ways we can only begin to imagine. Much of the research and new product development will take place here. If you’re in the business and you want to be where the action is, you’ll have to come to Richmond.”

Dr. Doetze Sikkema may be Dutch, but he fits the American stereotype of an absent-minded professor as he leads a troop of visitors around his lab. Tall and slender, he has a head of unruly white hair. Fluent in English, his Teutonic accent reinforces the appearance of scientific brilliance. As he talks passionately about his work, one imagines him rotating in his mind’s eye three-dimensional images of complex polymer structures.

Sikkema holds up a flask containing a dark, red-gray substance. The flask, he explains, contains monomer powder, the raw material of the M5 polymer. Polymers are long, molecular strings containing as many as 200,000 repeating hexagonal rings of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Adding acids to the powder catalyzes a chemical reaction that aligns the monomers and fuses them through chemical bonds along the length of the molecular strings. This bonding gives M5 some of its extraordinary properties.

As the polymer solution cools to room temperature, it becomes a pliable, dark gray solid that looks like a lump of plastic. Sikkema takes his visitors to a machine where they observe a lump being extruded into tiny, barely visible fibers. Later in the production process, the fibers are washed, spun into yarns and put under controlled stress. Tension affects the crystalline structure of the fiber, conferring some its unique properties.

M5 fiber, Sikkema says matter of factly, is much stronger by weight than Kevlar®. It’s more fire resistant than Nomex – indeed, it is “the most fire-resistant fiber ever developed.” It’s less brittle than carbon fiber. It’s lighter and stiffer than other fibers, and it doesn’t “fail catastrophically” – in other words, it doesn’t snap when stretched. Most incredibly, M5 combines all these high-performance properties in a single fiber.

It’s little wonder, as Gene Vetter noted in his ground-breaking address, that the U.S. Army has dubbed M5 “the new super fiber.”

It’s an instructive story on how this prodigious polymer, developed in a Dutch lab, came to Greater Richmond, Va., in Chesterfield County."

Dr. Sikkema built his career conducting polymer research for Akzo Nobel, a Dutch conglomerate with assets in chemicals, pharmaceuticals and fibers. In the 1980s, he followed with great interest a U.S. Defense Department initiative in advanced fibers. The fruit of that program, a high-strength fiber called Zylon, was a big disappointment. Although it advanced the start of the art in fiber technology in some respects, it was not suitable for the advanced composites the Air Force wanted to develop.

Toyobo, based in Osaka, Japan, acquired the Zylon technology and built a major business around it. Zylon-based material now appears in a wide variety of products from body armor to sail cloth, from ski poles to tire belts, from fire-resistant apparel to fiber optic cable.

Convinced that he could create an advanced polymer the Air Force would want, Sikkema took Akzo’s polymer research program in a new direction. He achieved tremendous progress, but his superiors were curiously unimpressed. He describes his R&D program as “an effort that was tolerated rather than supported.” When the time came to commercialize the new fiber, Sikkema hit a wall. “They cut the strings,” he recalls. “They told me, ‘Go find something more worthwhile to do.’”

Sikkema’s big opportunity came when Akzo, deciding to reinvent itself as a pharmaceutical company, began divesting assets. The scientist leaped at the chance to spin off his project to someone eager to use his technology.

Before meeting Doetze Sikkema, Gene Vetter had no idea of getting into the fiber-manufacturing business, much less moving to Richmond. The ex-Navy man had worked for a number of defense contractors since the 1980s, mainly in the area of naval combat systems. In 1997, he founded his own company, Magellan Systems, to scour the world for technologies with promising Navy applications. Other than the traffic, he was perfectly happy with his location in Bethesda, Md.

“M5 wasn’t on the radar screen,” Vetter says. It was only in a serendipitous encounter with some professors at Georgia Tech that he heard about Sikkema’s research. But after visiting the Dutchman, he immediately saw the fiber’s potential. Indeed, Vetter was so impressed that he acquired Akzo’s technology, hired Sikkema, began phasing out his technology-consulting business, and transformed Magellan into an enterprise with the sole focus of commercializing and manufacturing M5 fiber.

Crucial to the company’s prospects was recruiting partners in the high-performance fiber industry. Magellan has signed up DuPont as an investor and a collaborator, providing technical assistance in the design and construction of the pilot plant. Meanwhile, the company continues to explore potential strategic relationships with others interested in the development of M5.

The Pentagon’s Objective Force Warrior program has a mission of developing the weapons, armor, communications devices and other equipment for the 21st century fighting man. One of the most intractable challenges is bringing down the weight of the gear, which currently runs as much as 50 pounds. He’s been told, Vetter says, that M5 has the potential to cut the weight by two-thirds. That either makes soldiers more mobile or allows them to carry even more gear than ever.

Another likely application is helicopter blades. The blades must be strong enough to withstand enormous stress. Yet the weight, or mass, of the blades creates tremendous torque, rendering helicopters difficult to control. Reducing the mass/weight of the blades would cut the torque and make helicopters far more maneuverable.

Although Vetter has identified priority applications – he particularly likes projects backed by hard cash – he remains open to new ideas. “We’re always looking for new uses,” he says. As Magellan grows, he also anticipates looking for skilled employees such as polymer chemists and process engineers.

Vetter also is open to forging research partnerships with Virginia universities. Although he describes Sikkema as “one of the top polymer chemists in the world,” he recognizes that his chief scientist can’t do it all by himself. He has developed strong relationships with North Carolina State and Leeds University in England, but he’s also exploring a connection to Virginia Commonwealth University’s chemical engineering program.

The enthusiasm at Magellan is palpable. “We’re on a mission here,” Vetter says. “We literally stay up at night and think about this: M5 could be [armor] on somebody’s back already. It could be on an airplane wing already.” The world needs M5, and time is a-wasting.

-- September 5, 2003