The 2024 Edison Awards officially announced the winners in the State of Florida on April 18, US time! With the support of the Department of Industrial Technology and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, MIRDC has won the award again this year. It has been the eighth consecutive year that MIRDC has won an international award, and this time, "Stainless Steel Hardening", "Micro-complex in-tube Coating", and "Intelligent 3D Electrochemical Processing System" are the three scientific and technological research and development achievements won the award. The technologies can be successfully applied in engineering and robotics, business technology, aerospace and flight technology and allow MIRDC to shine internationally with one silver and two bronze results, constantly pursuing better results. It has also achieved a leading position in technological innovation.
The silver winner of the Edison Awards - "Stainless Steel Hardening", is because it is necessary to improve the insufficient strength, poor corrosion resistance and insufficient mass production. The technology has been developed into a widely used and corrosion-resistant metal material for high-value-added products. In other words, to focus on the processing process of stainless-steel materials and provide intelligent continuous corrosion resistance and hardening process, this technology combines systems and innovative designs, and the application of a low-temperature continuous process not only enables flexible and mass production but also maintains high hardness and high quality of objects. Corrosion resistance properties, successfully providing innovative solutions for the stainless-steel industry. This technology can be applied to precision components such as optoelectronic semiconductors, machine tools, aerospace, electric vehicles and motorcycles, medical equipment, food processing, chemicals, fasteners, valves, etc.
One of the bronze winners of the Edison Awards - "Micro-complex in-tube Coating", is the world's first micro-complex fuel pipe coating technology used in satellite propulsion systems. It is the only one that can target micro-slender features with an inner diameter of only 4 mm. Curved pipes and other 3D complex geometric shapes of pipes form a highly uniform, complete and dense nanometer-level coating protective layer. For applications in the space industry, especially in the multi-channel slender fuel stainless steel pipe fittings of satellite orbit change systems, the development can improve the compatibility with fuel and promote the localization of crucial satellite components. Recently, the development has been initially applied to the aerospace satellite industry and gradually expanded to the semiconductor and medical industries.The development has assisted the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) in cooperating with research projects for the third consecutive year.
The other bronze winner of the Edison Awards - "Intelligent 3D Electrochemical Processing System", not only successfully overcomes the problems of traditional electric discharge machining loss electrodes and complex electrochemical machining paths for the manufacturing industry but also can solve difficult-to-cut processing materials and ultra-thin structures at once problems such as curved workpieces or requiring no residual stress on the material surface after processing. This technology can increase production efficiency by more than three times, which will help domestically produced independent technologies be introduced into the international supply chain system for aerospace components. The development has been successfully used in the manufacturing verification of aerospace turbofan engine diffusers. The MIRDC technical team also cooperates internationally with the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, to promote MIRDC's independent research and development technology to the international stage.
It is particularly worth mentioning that "Stainless Steel Hardening" and "Intelligent 3D Electrochemical Processing System" have both won the R&D 100 Awards in 2022 and 2023, respectively and "Micro-complex in-tube Coating" has participated in the Edison Awards for the first time and received recognition from international awards. Yung-Hsiang Lai, the President of MIRDC, stated that MIRDC has always adhered to the mission of solving industrial needs and is committed to innovative research and development. This year, special arrangements were made for the winning team to go to the United States to attend the award ceremony to unite the team and demonstrate MIRDC's spirit of continuous progress and contribution to the development of science and technology.