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

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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.