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

这个PFI: AIR技术翻译项目的重点是翻译一种专利的纳米颗粒结构传感器技术，以提高空气质量化学传感器的性能。传感器技术很重要，因为它将对人类健康产生广泛影响，为普通民众提供一种方法来测量空气污染指标挥发性有机化合物（VOCs）水平以及家庭和环境中的相关风险。该项目为低成本合成纳米颗粒提供了大规模和绿色的途径，这些纳米颗粒可作为制造传感器的可打印纳米材料。与现有的传感纳米材料制造方法相比，具有成本更低的优点。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，这不仅增加了制造成本和有毒废物的环境，而且降低了商业规模制造纳米颗粒的可行性。所提出的纳米颗粒结构空气质量传感器将具有几个独特的特征，如可调谐的传感结构和增加的传感器稳定性，并有望实现高灵敏度、高选择性和低检测极限。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颗粒，作为可打印的微电极和敏感支架，解决了从研究发现到商业应用的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。本文将对在高浓度金属前驱体水溶液中通过控制聚集成核和聚集生长来合成不同组成的合金纳米颗粒的方法进行试验。如果成功，这将降低纳米材料的成本，并创造一个绿色的途径，消除了在大多数现有合成方案中使用的大量有机溶剂的使用。这种大规模合成具有许多独特的特性，包括可调的表面成分与传感膜结构所需的金基表面化学兼容，与纯铜纳米粒子相比，稳定性更高，与纯金纳米粒子相比，纳米粒子的成本更低，而不会牺牲所需的性能。与传统微加工工艺制造的传感器产品相比，该传感器具有低成本制造、高灵敏度和多路复用能力，可用于检测多种VOCs，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，将通过与工业伙伴积极合作，在环境监测传感器市场上实现技术商业化，接受创业和技术翻译经验方面的培训。该项目吸引了几个有创业经验的工业合作伙伴，他们对纳米粒子和传感器技术的授权感兴趣，以测试和评估纳米材料和传感器的性能，从而将这项技术从研究发现转化为商业现实。

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.