
Face to Face Around Materion with David Sanchez
Advanced Chemicals would like to introduce David Sanchez, Senior Materials & Applications Scientist, who has worked for Materion (formerly CERAC/Williams) for over twelve years. During that time, he has developed specialty optics devices/materials, inorganic chemicals and markets for the advancement of vacuum coating.
David currently reports to Bart Ott, VP AC Business Development, in the Milwaukee facility and travels to Advanced Chemicals sites as needed to support key projects, facilitate and qualify products, collaborate with sales, and assist with R&D. He also continues to support coating materials and applications for UV, VIS and IR, including recent work specializing in remote phosphors and advanced display technology. While David’s titles have changed over the years, he is proud of his global role at Materion “in bringing customer’s challenges to the table and to work on technological solutions for thin film applications and technical materials.”
Through the Materion Milwaukee and New York facilities, David worked on innovative materials and technologies for photovoltaics and memory. This led to strong collaboration and success with the government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as well as with prominent thin film module manufacturers and technical universities.
An active member of the Society of Vacuum Coaters (SVC) from his earliest days, David is now a SVC Board Member and has a high level of participation with organizations such as SPIE, IEEE and PVMC (Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium). This involvement extends to his maintenance of a broad professional network of global technical experts. His personal commitment is to lifelong advancement of coating materials that will enable growth in thin film technology.
David has a double major degree from the University of California in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Engineering. Beyond formal education, he dedicates his time to expanding his technical expertise and study of thin film technology.
Previous to Materion, David aggressively employed advanced techniques to foster high performance coating materials for anti-counterfeiting and display technologies. He also worked on the successful construction and scale-up of specialty post coating processes in California and China while developing key partnerships in the region. His four years serving in the US Marine Corps included time on the “Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team” which provided valuable experience with optics especially IR detection and munitions.
David is the primary contact for all Materion Advanced Chemicals online technical questions and serves as the direct resource for the worldwide sales network for optical materials. One of the greatest pleasures of his role at Materion is “the fact that I work hand in hand with sales and development to understand the customer’s needs and then get to apply my expertise to help them with effective technical solutions.”
In addition to his intellectual pursuits, David is dedicated to fitness and weight lifting. For pleasure, he also coaches and plays adult softball.