This year’s ISPE Boston Product Show (October 1, 2025, at Gillette Stadium) delivered a great platform for innovation, collaboration, and discovery in the life sciences, pharmaceutical, and process industries. This year, we were thrilled to engage with customers, partners, and industry leaders about how our advanced coatings address evolving challenges in flow path systems, analytical instrumentation, and bioprocessing.
Our Dr. Jesse Bischof (left) and Patrick Dick manned the SilcoTek station at the ISPE Boston Product Show last week.
Show Highlights & Takeaways
Here are a few themes and observations we encountered on the show floor:
-
Strong turnout, broad technical interest: With over 450 exhibitors and more than 4,500 professionals in attendance, the energy was palpable. ISPE attendees spanned engineering, quality, regulatory, R&D, and operations disciplines, which underscored the multidisciplinary demands of modern pharma/biotech.
-
Digital transformation & data-driven manufacturing: Across sessions and conversations, process analytics, real-time monitoring, and smart facility design were recurrent topics. These trends point to an increasing need for robust, inert surfaces and flow paths that don’t introduce noise, contamination, or corrosion.
-
Sustainability, robustness, and lifecycle cost: Many visitors were eager to reduce maintenance, downtime, and consumables usage. Coatings that extend service life, reduce fouling, and mitigate corrosion are rising in importance in that conversation.
-
Hands-on demos and side conversations: In face-to-face discussions, side-by-side comparisons (e.g. coated vs uncoated components) often resonated more than theoretical claims. We got good feedback by showing how our coatings improve inertness, cleanliness, and maintenance costs in real-world use cases.
SilcoTek’s Focus & Demonstrations
At our booth and in conversations, Jesse and Patrick emphasized how SilcoTek coatings address real challenges that designers, engineers, and scientists face in high-purity environments. Some of the key messages:
-
Our core strength lies in applying chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coatings that apply uniform, molecularly bonded silicon-based barriers, delivering unmatched inertness for demanding process environments.
-
These coatings act as a barrier between the substrate (metal, alloy, glass, ceramics) and the process fluid or analyte, reducing interactions, corrosion, adsorption, fouling, and cross-contamination.
-
The coatings are ultra-thin, so they typically don’t disrupt tight tolerances or fluid dynamics, making them easier to integrate into existing designs.
-
We highlighted several product families (like Dursan®) and their certifications (e.g. USP Class VI, NSF) in the context of life sciences and analytical uses.
In booth demos, we also showed how our coatings affect surface fouling resistance and how coated flow paths help reduce carryover in sensitive analytical or bioprocess systems.
Applications Where SilcoTek Coatings Shine
Below are some of the key application areas we discussed at the ISPE Boston Product Show, along with many proven advantages.
| Application Domain |
Challenges / Failure Modes |
How SilcoTek Helps / Value-Add
|
| Analytical Chemistry / LC / GC / Trace-level sampling |
Adsorption, corrosion, surface interactions, memory effects, contamination |
Coatings create ultra-inert surfaces to reduce analyte interaction and carryover. For example, Dursan is used for inert flow paths to minimize adsorption. |
| Life Sciences / Bioprocess / Diagnostic systems |
Protein binding, fouling, cleaning-in-place stress, sample carryover |
Coatings lower non-specific binding, improve stability under cleaning agents, and reduce test failures or false positives. |
| Pharma / Biopharma fluid systems |
Corrosion, particle generation, contamination across process lines |
The coatings act as corrosion-resistant and inert barrier layers, prolonging lifetime, reducing maintenance, and maintaining purity. |
| Semiconductor / High-purity gas & vacuum systems |
Corrosive gases, contamination, deposition in exhausts, wafer-level purity |
Though outside the biopharma core, these are close adjacent markets. SilcoTek coatings protect gas delivery lines, exhaust scrubbing, connectors, and vacuum components. |
| Energy, chemical, specialty process flow systems |
Corrosive reagents, harsh operating conditions, mixed chemistries |
Our coatings are deployed in chemical process flows, sampling, produced water, and more. |
In comparison to other commonly known solutions, SilcoTek's coatings have been proven to provide excellent protection for many biopharma and analytical applications.
Strategic Reflections & Next Steps
If you stopped by our table at ISPE Boston or followed the event from afar, you probably noticed a few recurring themes shaping the future of pharma and bioprocess innovation. Here’s what they mean for you and your operation:
Education is key to unlocking coating benefits. If you’re exploring surface coatings for the first time, you’re not alone. Many engineers and scientists are still learning how CVD coatings can transform performance and reliability in so many different applications. That’s why we’re developing more educational resources - webinars, application notes, and real-world case studies - to help you make informed, confident decisions.
Inspiration often comes from other industries. Solutions proven in analytical instrumentation can often solve similar problems in bioprocessing or pharmaceutical systems. We’ll continue sharing cross-industry stories that help you see how inert coatings can improve cleanliness, consistency, and system performance in your own environment.
Proving value matters. You need hard data before making process changes. We’re focused on providing side-by-side comparisons that clearly show how SilcoTek coatings can cut downtime, improve yield, and simplify cleaning - so you can justify the investment with measurable results.
Collaboration drives innovation. Many of you told us you’re looking for custom solutions - unique geometries, new applications, or performance testing. We welcome that collaboration and invite you to work with us on prototypes or joint development projects that fit your exact needs.
Sustainability is becoming everyone’s business. Reducing waste, extending equipment life, and minimizing chemical use are no longer optional goals - they’re part of every smart facility’s mission. Coatings that reduce replacement frequency and cleaning cycles can play a direct role in achieving your sustainability targets.
Reach out to our team with any questions or to get a sample to test in your application!
