Built to Solve Coating Problems Others Can't
DRS Research is an advanced materials company founded on the principle that the most demanding operating environments deserve purpose-engineered coating solutions — not catalogue products.
Enabling Extreme Performance
To develop and deploy advanced RHEA thermal spray coating systems that enable next-generation hardware to operate reliably in environments — temperatures, corrosion, wear, and radiation — that exceed the capability of any existing commercial coating technology.
The Standard for Extreme Coatings
To become the recognized technical authority and preferred development partner for protective coating systems in aerospace, defense, nuclear, and industrial applications — where the cost of coating failure is measured in mission outcomes, not dollars.
DRS Research was founded by materials scientists and process engineers who spent careers watching high-performance hardware fail — not because of design flaws, but because the available coating options couldn't keep pace with operating requirements. The gap between what conventional thermal spray could deliver and what advanced aerospace, defense, and nuclear programs actually needed was widening.
The answer, we believed, was in High Entropy Alloys — multi-principal-element systems whose configurational entropy promotes single-phase microstructures with exceptional thermal stability. But translating HEA science from academic coupons to production-ready thermal spray coatings required a different kind of organization: one that combined deep alloy design capability with thermal spray process expertise and a genuine willingness to engage on the hardest application problems.
Starting with a DOE SBIR award in 2012, we built a systematic body of work across molten salt corrosion, hypersonic thermal protection, gun barrel erosion, and high-temperature dielectric systems. Each program added to a growing database of RHEA composition-process-performance relationships that no academic group or conventional coating vendor has assembled.
Today, DRS operates from our Palo Alto facility with active programs spanning four market verticals and six government-funded research awards. We remain small by design — every customer engagement is led by senior engineers who own both the science and the process.
How We Work
Engineering Rigor
Every claim we make is backed by data. We design experiments to be conclusive, report failures as transparently as successes, and never overstate performance.
Application Focus
We start with your operating environment and work backward to the coating. Coating science in service of engineering problems — not the other way around.
Transparency
Our customers see our data, our process parameters, and our failure modes. We believe informed customers make better decisions and build better programs.
Long-Term Partnership
The most valuable relationships we have are with customers who have worked with us across multiple development cycles. We invest in those relationships deliberately.