PFI: AIR-TT: Scale-up Synthesis of Nanoparticles for Manufacturing Microelectrodes and Sensing Films of Indoor Air Quality Chemiresistor Sensors

该 PFI：AIR 技术翻译项目的重点是翻译增强空气质量化学传感器性能所需的专利纳米颗粒结构传感器技术。 传感器技术非常重要，因为它将为普通大众提供一种测量空气污染指标挥发性有机化合物 (VOC) 水平以及家庭和环境中的相关风险的方法，从而对人类健康产生广泛影响。 该项目为低成本合成纳米颗粒作为用于制造传感器的可打印纳米材料提供了一条大规模的绿色途径。 与现有方法相比，它提供了传感纳米材料制造成本较低的优势。现有的方法大多基于实验室小批量合成，涉及大量有机溶剂，这不仅增加了高昂的制造成本以及对环境的有毒废物，而且还降低了纳米颗粒商业规模制造的可行性。 所提出的纳米颗粒结构空气质量传感器将具有多种独特的功能，例如可调谐传感结构和增强的传感器稳定性，并有望实现高灵敏度、高选择性和低检测限。该项目通过建立大规模绿色合成路线来制造铜金合金纳米粒子作为可打印微电极和敏感支架，解决了从研究发现到商业应用、低成本传感器制造和可扩展纳米材料制备之间的重要技术差距。 将测试所提出的通过控制高浓度金属前体水溶液中的聚集成核和聚集生长来合成不同成分的合金纳米颗粒的方法。如果成功，这将降低纳米材料的成本，并创建一条绿色途径，消除大多数现有合成方案中使用的大量有机溶剂。 这种合成放大具有许多独特的属性，包括与传感膜结构所需的金基表面化学兼容的可调表面成分、与纯铜纳米颗粒相比稳定性更高，以及与纯金纳米颗粒相比纳米颗粒成本更低，而不牺牲所需的性能。 与市场上通过传统微加工工艺制造的现有传感器产品相比，用于检测多种VOC的传感器的低成本制造、高灵敏度和多路复用能力的结合预计将在传感器市场上具有竞争力。 参与该项目的人员，包括两名研究生和两名本科生研究人员，将通过与工业合作伙伴的积极合作，接受创业和技术转化经验方面的培训，以实现环境监测传感器市场技术的商业化。 该项目吸引了多个具有创业经验并有兴趣获得纳米颗粒和传感器技术许可的工业合作伙伴，以测试和评估纳米材料和传感器的性能，以实现从研究发现到商业现实的技术转化工作。

This PFI: AIR Technology Translation project focuses on translating a patented nanoparticle-structured sensor technology needed to enhance the performance of air-quality chemical sensors. The sensor technology is important because it will have a broad impact to human health in terms of providing a method for the general population to measure air-contamination indicator volatile organic compounds (VOCs) levels and associated risks at home and in the environment. This project provides a large-scale and green route toward the low-cost synthesis of nanoparticles as printable nanomaterials that are used for manufacturing the sensors. It provides the advantage of lower cost manufacturing of the sensing nanomaterials in comparison with existing methods. Existing methods are mostly based on laboratory small quantity synthesis involving large amount of organic solvents, which not only adds a high cost for the manufacturing along with toxic wastes to the environment, but also diminish the viability of commercial scale manufacturing of the nanoparticles. The proposed nanoparticle-structured air-quality sensors will have several unique features such as tunable sensing structure and increased sensor stability, and are anticipated to enable high sensitivity, high selectivity, and low detection limit. This project addresses an important technology gap, as it translates from research discovery toward commercial application, between low-cost sensor manufacturing and scalable nanomaterials preparation by establishing a large-scale and green synthesis route for manufacturing copper-gold alloy nanoparticles as printable micorelectrodes and sensitive scaffolds. The proposed approach to synthesizing the alloy nanoparticles of different compositions by controlling aggregative nucleation and aggregative growth in aqueous solutions of highly-concentrated metal precursors will be tested. If successful, this will reduce the cost of the nanomaterials and create a green pathway that eliminates the use of large amounts of organic solvents as used in most of the existing synthesis protocols. This synthesis scale up features a number of unique attributes, including tunable surface composition compatible to gold-based surface chemistry needed for the sensing film structure, increased stability in comparison with pure copper nanoparticles, and lower cost of the nanoparticles in comparison with pure gold nanoparticles without sacrificing the desired performance. The combination of low-cost manufacturing, high sensitivity, and multiplexing capability of the sensors for detecting multiple VOCs is expected to be competitive in the sensor market in comparison with existing sensor products in the market manufactured by traditional microfabrication processes. Personnel involved in this project, including two graduate and two undergraduate student researchers, will receive training in terms of entrepreneurship and technology translation experiences through active collaborations with industrial partners towards commercialization of the technology in the sensor market for environmental monitoring. The project engages several industrial partners who have entrepreneurship experiences and are interested in licensing the nanoparticle and sensor technologies to test and evaluate the nanomaterials and sensor performances in this technology translation effort from research discovery toward commercial reality.