The low-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion shock wave frag­men­ta­tion process is suit­able for process­es with high puri­ty require­ments. Due to the use of acoustic shock waves and the low lev­el of con­tact com­pared to con­ven­tion­al frag­men­ta­tion meth­ods, met­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is kept to a min­i­mum (<1 ppm) dur­ing the treat­ment process.

Due to the use of elec­tri­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed shock waves, the shock wave frag­men­ta­tion does not result in any form of direct mechan­i­cal inter­ac­tion with the tar­get mate­ri­als, as in clas­si­cal frag­men­ta­tion meth­ods, so that one can speak of a non-con­tact milling process. No con­tact with a sol­id state grind­ing body means there is also no increased wear dur­ing the pro­cess­ing of hard, abra­sive mate­ri­als. This makes it pos­si­ble to effi­cient­ly process hard, abra­sive mate­ri­als with­out fac­ing the prob­lem of high wear. The shock wave method used by Impul­sTec gen­er­ates com­par­a­tive­ly few impu­ri­ties due to ero­sion on the elec­trodes. In recent years, sev­er­al dif­fer­ent research projects allowed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of exper­tise to be gained in the low-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion frag­men­ta­tion of semi­con­duc­tor mate­ri­als and the pro­cess­ing of high-puri­ty ceram­ics as well as glass products.

The high-puri­ty frag­men­ta­tion of ceram­ic mono­liths and var­i­ous glass prod­ucts can be men­tioned here as an exam­ple. The low-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion shock wave process can be used to obtain high-puri­ty reusable mate­r­i­al fractions.