Tommaso Frison once looked at a colleague’s bare nails and smiled—gel polish, he realized, was the perfect metaphor for his years of research. In Eindhoven, where he balanced industrial innovation with academic rigor, Frison uncovered a cleaner, faster way to harden protective coatings—one that could soon reshape how we manufacture everything from food packaging to car finishes. At the heart of his work lies a simple but powerful shift: replacing ultraviolet (UV) light with electron beam (EB) technology to cure coatings in milliseconds, without toxic additives.
Coatings are invisible guardians—on soda cans, chip bags, car bodies, and kitchen cabinets—shielding materials from moisture, rust, and sunlight. For decades, UV curing has dominated the industry, using photoinitiators to trigger hardening. But those initiators are often toxic, limiting their use in food-safe applications. They also struggle with thick or pigmented layers, where UV light can’t penetrate evenly. EB technology sidesteps these flaws. Instead of light, it uses a beam of high-energy electrons generated in a vacuum chamber, accelerating electrons from a heated filament across a voltage gradient. As materials pass beneath on a conveyor, they cure almost instantly—no solvents, no photoinitiators, no compromise.
Frison’s Ph.D. research at TU/e, conducted in partnership with Nemho Innovations, mapped the molecular dance of acrylate monomers and oligomers under electron bombardment. He didn’t just observe the reaction—he decoded it, creating a chemical map that reveals exactly which bonds form and break under specific conditions. This analytical workflow now serves as a blueprint for designing smarter, more durable coatings. One breakthrough: electron beams produce a more uniform polymer network than UV, resulting in coatings that are tougher, more weather-resistant, and chemically stable. In practical terms, this means longer-lasting finishes and higher production speeds—especially valuable in printing and packaging, where milliseconds save millions.
The impact extends beyond performance. Because EB curing eliminates photoinitiators, it opens the door to safer food packaging and eco-friendly manufacturing. Frison’s work has already moved from lab to product, including new multiphase polymer coatings that blend acrylates and epoxies into interpenetrating networks—hybrid materials stronger than their individual parts. As industry seeks greener alternatives, EB technology offers a rare win-win: faster, safer, and more robust.
"We truly believe these more sustainable coatings represent the future," Frison said as he defended his dissertation on June 11. With electron beams quietly revolutionizing an invisible world, that future may arrive sooner than we think.