I-Corps: Electrochemical Deposition of Organic Nanowire Sensors

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是改善化学和环境监测、食品安全和反恐能力的气体传感。2014年，全球气体传感器市场估计约为200亿美元，而纳米传感器市场仅为1310万美元。市场规模小的部分原因是缺乏可行的制造技术，无法将新型纳米材料用于传感器应用。尽管纳米材料的研究和开发取得了巨大的进步，但其复杂性和成本阻碍了国内纳米传感器市场的快速增长。该技术可以降低纳米线传感器的制造成本和复杂性，并有可能推动纳米传感器市场的显著增长。这个I-Corps项目追求与当前微电子兼容的气体传感器制造技术。它依赖于溶液结晶过程，将纳米线直接精确地放置在芯片上。这项技术源于一项发现，当有机晶体化合物与纳米粒子混合时，纳米线在溶剂蒸发后在纳米粒子上成核。纳米线传感器已经针对多种气体进行了测试，以获得传感器的性能数据。在目前的竞争技术中，纳米线需要在有图案的衬底上排列并放置在精确的位置和方向上，这是一个复杂的过程。该方法利用衬底图案作为纳米线生长和取向的成核点，直接在金属衬底上合成有机纳米线。

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.