Pam is Director of Global Applications Engineering at Peak Nano, where she builds and leads the global applications engineering team, working with customers across the capacitor, food packaging, and medical packaging markets to translate NanoPlex™ film performance into real-world solutions. She brings more than 15 years of experience taking advanced materials from lab to commercial scale, including FDA-approved food-contact coatings adopted by major consumer brands, with prior leadership roles spanning technical, regulatory, sustainability, and product development across the polymer, coatings, and packaging industries. She holds a BSc in Chemistry from Rochester Institute of Technology and a PhD in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Here she speaks to ORIENTATE about North American capacitor and packaging markets and how Peak Nano’s NanoPlex Technology is supporting these and the innovation of next generation materials.

OR: Pam, for our readers who are less familiar with Peak Nano, please can you give a brief overview of the company and its journey so far? 

PW: Peak Nano develops advanced nanolayered polymer films, which are high-performance dielectric and barrier materials for capacitors and broader multilayer film applications. Founded on research from Case Western Reserve University and backed by over 40 years of peer-reviewed science, the company has grown from serving defence, energy, and communications use cases into rapidly growing commercial markets such as AI data centre power infrastructure, power electronics, EVs and EV charging, fusion energy enablement, and sustainable packaging for food and medicine. Its key differentiators are US-based film design and engineering, with allied-nation supply chains, and its patented NanoPlex™ nanolayer film technology, which accelerates film development by leveraging nanoscale architecture rather than developing new polymer chemistry.

OR: Can you talk us through your NanoPlex Technology and how it differs from conventional multilayer extrusion methods? 

PW: NanoPlex uses nanolayer coextrusion to engineer film structures at a much finer scale than conventional multilayer extrusion. Instead of simply combining a few (typically 3–11) relatively thick layers, NanoPlex technology can create hundreds to thousands of controlled nanoscale layers, each as thin as 25 nanometres. At this scale, polymers can no longer form their normal three-dimensional crystal structures. Instead, they crystallise as flat, oriented, single-crystal lamellae. That confinement-induced crystallisation allows us to control the film architecture and fine-tune dielectric, thermal, mechanical, and barrier properties. 

Nanolayer coextrusion runs on standard extrusion equipment, and because we’re using commercially available polymers, development cycles run in weeks rather than the years typical of new polymer chemistry. For capacitors, our film is designed from the substrate up for higher voltage, higher temperature, and improved reliability.

OR:  NanoPlex films were initially developed for capacitor applications within the defence, energy and communications industries. How would you describe the current state of the capacitor film market in North America? 

PW: The North American market is under pressure to support multiple growing areas such as electrification, AI data centres, renewable energy, defence, and power electronics. Several forces are loading new thermal, voltage, and duty-cycle requirements onto these films, including grid modernisation, the transition to 800 VDC architectures by AI data centres and EVs, and the rapid adoption of SiC and GaN wide-bandgap switching devices. The major issue is that standard BOPP capacitor film wasn’t designed for these environments. Its thermal ceiling is ~105°C and its performance degrades under high switching frequencies, voltages, and temperatures. 

There’s also a supply chain concern. Most global BOPP capacitor film production is concentrated outside the US, especially in China. For defence programs, grid hardening, and AI infrastructure (all of which are increasingly treated as national security concerns), that’s a huge structural vulnerability, and it’s becoming impossible to ignore.

OR: Performance and reliability are particularly critical within capacitor applications. In what ways does nanolayer technology enhance capacitor performance compared to conventional materials and processing methods? 

PW: NanoPlex LDF addresses the specific failure modes of conventional BOPP in demanding environments. Thermal performance is the most immediate. NanoPlex LDF operates continuously at 135°C without derating (30° above BOPP's practical ceiling), eliminating the need to derate, stack more capacitors to compensate, or accept accelerated aging and reduced service life. In addition, the dissipation factor is ultra-low, which is essential for SiC/GaN switching. Service life is 3–5x longer than BOPP at equivalent operating conditions. And for pulsed-power applications, NanoPlex HDC delivers up to 4x the energy density of BOPP, enabling significantly smaller capacitor banks.

ORIENTATE subscribers can read the full interview in the June 2026 issue. 

Not an ORIENTATE subscriber? click here to subscribe today!