SNM: Manufacturing Autonomy for Directed Evolution of Materials (MADE-Materials) for Robust, Scalable Nanomanufacturing

尖端材料的开发和制造通常涉及耗时的材料和工艺设计阶段，然后对样本进行广泛测试，以随着制造规模从实验室扩大到中试计划，再到工业工艺规模而调整工艺条件。这些独特的步骤提高了将新的和改进的材料引入工业管道的成本障碍，并增加了国内制造的先进纳米材料的成本。幸运的是，最近在材料的数值建模，增材制造和快速测试方面的发展表明，材料开发和纳米制造的新方法，其中以前不同的和耗时的阶段可以几乎瞬间进行，以达到最佳的材料结构及其制造工艺条件。该奖项的重点是通过以下方式改造纳米结构材料的传统开环合成：1）使用通用的3D打印方法来制造这些纳米材料和纳米结构，2）将材料特性表征直接纳入打印过程，以及3）使用人工智能（AI）算法来调整飞行过程条件以实现所需的材料特性。这些概念和组成部分将被整合到技术课程，动手研究的机会，并推广研讨会，以广泛的学生和公众。联合PI计划通过与当地博物馆的合作以及课程和课外活动来利用现有的推广和教育活动。该方法和框架是对过程建模、材料合成和表征以及系统设计的研究，以自主发现新的材料配置并减少制造缺陷和不确定性。这个人工智能框架将“理解”过程-结构-属性关系，制造约束，以及重要的是，材料属性和制造质量的统计变化。这项研究的智力价值是发现一般nanomanufacturing工具和原料，监督遗传算法，自主纠正缺陷和弥补先天制造不准确的搜索替代设计，这是在对比标准的工具，最大限度地减少不确定性（例如环境控制）或依赖于制造后的表征与人为干预。该框架将使用纳米级增材制造（AM）作为基本制造工具和纳米结构超材料作为应用程序进行测试。通过这种方法制造的范例和纳米级超材料对集成系统的可扩展纳米制造具有深远的影响。自主演变参数以满足构造规范的系统的范例可扩展到大规模增材制造和制药，其中可用的工艺参数空间和化学物质是巨大的，并且设计不是直观的。增材纳米制造有可能通过使用多种材料进行三维（3D）设计来改变超材料设计，从而创建复杂的复合超结构。

The development and manufacturing of cutting edge materials typically involves time-consuming materials and process design phases, followed by extensive testing of samples to adjust process conditions as the manufacturing scales up from the lab, to pilot plan, to industrial process scale. These distinct steps drive up the cost barrier to introduction of new and improved materials into the industrial pipeline and increase the cost of domestically manufactured advanced nanomaterials. Fortunately, recent developments in numerical modeling, additive manufacturing, and rapid testing of materials suggest that a new approach to material development and nanomanufacturing, where the previously distinct and time-consuming phases could be carried out nearly instantaneously to arrive at optimal material structure as well as process conditions for its manufacture. The focus of this award is to revamp the traditional, open-loop synthesis of nanostructured materials by: 1) using a versatile 3-D printing approach to manufacture these nanomaterials and nanostructures, 2) incorporate material property characterization directly into the printing process, and 3) use an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to adjust on the fly process conditions to achieve desired material properties. These concepts and components will be integrated into technical coursework, hands-on research opportunities, and outreach workshops to a broad range of students and the public. The co-PIs plan to leverage existing outreach and educational activities through their group's collaboration with a local museum, as well as curricular and extracurricular activities. The approach and framework is an investigation of process modeling, materials synthesis and characterization, and system design to autonomously discover new material configurations and reduce manufacturing defects and uncertainty. This AI framework will "understand" process-structure-property relationships, manufacturing constraints, and, importantly, statistical variations in material properties and manufacturing quality. The intellectual merit of this study is the discovery of general nanomanufacturing tools and feedstocks, with supervisory genetic algorithms, that autonomously correct for defects and compensate for innate manufacturing inaccuracies by a search for alternative designs; this is in contrast to standard tools that minimize uncertainty (e.g. environmental controls) or rely on post-fabrication characterization with human intervention. The framework will be tested using nanoscale additive manufacturing (AM) as the fundamental manufacturing tool and nanostructured metamaterials as the application. The paradigm and nanoscale metamaterials made via this approach have far-reaching impacts on scalable nanomanufacturing for integrated systems. The paradigm of systems that autonomously evolve parameters to meet construct specifications is extensible to macroscale additive manufacturing and pharmaceuticals where the process parameter space and chemistries available is vast, and design is not intuitive. Additive nanomanufacturing has the potential to transform metamaterial design by enabling design in 3-dimensions (3D) with multiple materials, creating complex composite metastructures.