Innovative Building Envelop Materials with Light-Driven Autogeneous Environmental Cleaning

改善室内环境质量很重要，因为大多数人90%以上的时间是在室内度过的，特别是年轻人、老年人和慢性病患者。典型室内环境中的温度和湿度条件是细菌、霉菌等滋生的诱因。在传统建筑中，改善室内空气质量主要是通过通风系统，其运行需要相关的能量收支。这一研究将促进人们对二氧化钛纳米纤维复合材料用于建筑环境自动清洁的光催化性能的理解。在改善空气质量和去除空气污染物方面的自净作用将由环境光驱动，并通过纳米纤维的纳米孔结构进一步增强。这种材料将改善建筑结构的美学外观，并可用于各种装饰目的。材料设计将朝着绿色和可升级的生产方向量身定做。这一创新将展示新材料和新产品的设计，以改善室内环境的质量，从而显著改善公众生活，降低医疗成本。这样的创新将扩大多功能建筑围护结构的视野。它还将通过研究项目培训学生，提高年轻研究人员在创新材料设计和测试、绿色制造和智能建筑围护结构等领域的跨学科能力。这项研究的目标是通过微结构和光活性化学调节来优化创新多功能光催化纤维复合材料的设计。本研究的假设是：1)可以实现非金属掺杂二氧化钛纳米材料的绿色制造工艺，将激活光谱从紫外扩展到可见光和红外范围；2)通过复合纳米纤维结构可以实现高效的光催化空气净化。项目任务包括：1)开发经济有效的非金属掺杂二氧化钛纳米材料的合成制造技术，在可见光和/或近红外范围内具有广泛的激活光谱；2)表征非金属掺杂二氧化钛的光催化效率；3)结合多功能设计矩阵和应用方法，优化宽带光催化纳米纤维复合垫的设计；以及4)量化和微调纳米纤维毡的光催化效率和耐用性。

Improvement in indoor environmental quality is important as most people spend over 90 percent of their time indoors, especially the young, the elderly, and people with chronic illnesses. The temperature and humidity conditions in typical indoor environment are inductive to the growth of bacteria, molds, etc. Indoor air quality improvement in conventional buildings is primarily via the ventilation system, whose operation incurs an associated energy budget. This research will advance the understanding of the photocatalytic properties of titanium oxide nanofiber composite to be use for autogenously clean of the building environment. The autogenous cleaning function in air quality improvement and airborne contaminant removal will be driven by the ambient light and further augmented with nanoporous structure of the nanofiber. The material will improve the aesthetic appearance of building structures and can serve a variety of decoration purpose. The material design will be tailored towards green and upscalable production. This innovation will demonstrate the design of novel material and product to improve the quality of the indoor environment, which can lead to significant improvement in the public life and reduce the health care cost. Such innovation will expand the horizon of the multifunctional building envelope. It will also train students through research projects that increase the interdisciplinary competencies of young researchers in the areas of design and testing of innovative materials, green manufacturing, and smart building envelope, etc.The objective of this research is to optimize the design of an innovative multifunctional photocatalytic fiber composite through microstructuring and photoactivity chemical tuning. The hypotheses of this research are 1) a green manufacturing procedure for non-metal doped titanium oxide nanomaterials can be implemented to extend the activation spectrum from ultraviolet to the visible and infrared ranges; 2) high efficiency photocatalytic air cleaning can be achieved via composite nanofiber structure. The project tasks include: 1) develop economical and effective syntheses manufacturing technology for non-metal doped titanium oxide nanomaterials with extended activation spectrum in the visible and/or near-infrared ranges; 2) characterize the photocatalytic efficiency of non-metal doped titanium oxide; 3) optimize the design of broadband photocatalytic nanofiber composite mat considering multifunctional design matrix and methods of application; and 4) quantify and fine-tune the photocatalytic efficiency and durability of the nanofiber mat.