I-Corps: Electrochemical Deposition of Organic Nanowire Sensors

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to improve gas sensing for chemical and environmental monitoring, food safety, and antiterrorism capabilities. The global gas sensor market is estimated to be about $20 billion, while the subset of the nanosensor segment is only $13.1 million in 2014. The small market size is partially attributed to the lack of feasible manufacturing techniques that allow the utilization of novel nanomaterials for sensor applications. The complexity and the cost have prevented rapid growth of domestic nanosensor market despite tremendous progress in nanomaterials research and development. This technology may reduce the cost and complexity of manufacturing of nanowire sensors and could potentially propel significant growth of the nanosensor market.This I-Corps project pursues a gas sensor manufacturing technology, which is compatible with current microelectronics. It relies on a solution crystallization process that places nanowires directly and precisely on chips. The technology stems from a discovery when organic crystalline compounds were mixed with nanoparticles, nanowires nucleated on nanoparticles upon solvent evaporation. The nanowire sensor has been tested against a number of gases to obtain sensor performance data. In current competing technologies, nanowires need to be aligned and placed at precise locations and orientations on the patterned substrates, a complex process to scale up. This method synthesizes organic nanowires directly on the metal substrates by using the substrate pattern as nucleation points for the nanowire growth and orientation.