SBIR Phase I: Non-Thermal Plasma Source for Functional Metal-Oxide Nanoparticle Coatings

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目将开发一种新的工艺和平台，用于气溶胶合成金属氧化物纳米颗粒。当与现有的气溶胶沉积技术相结合时，这种气溶胶合成源将使下一代功能性涂料的生产成为可能。其中包括用于太阳能模块的抗反射和自清洁涂层，减少太阳能电池中银用量的新型电触点，以及用于提高热效率的窗户热障涂层。这些都代表了一个需要涂料创新的巨大潜在市场：例如，涂层平板玻璃市场预计将在2025年达到432亿美元，该项目的金属氧化物纳米颗粒涂料预计将占据至少10%的市场份额。除了该项目的商业和相关的社会影响之外，该项目还将增加对纳米材料在气相中的成核以及随后在低压流动中对纳米颗粒的操作的科学理解。这个项目的智力价值在于它开发了一种在气相合成金属氧化物材料的新方法，从而产生了一种可以操纵的气溶胶，并在气流中沉积在基材上。金属氧化物纳米颗粒的合成以及随后形成的薄膜的现有技术面临三个挑战：(1)利用高压气相工艺的合成方法往往会产生大的光散射团块，从而产生朦胧的薄膜；(2)“湿式”合成涂层技术可能面临稳定性挑战、光学不均匀性和不易缩放的工艺；(3)所有方法对薄膜光学特性的控制都有限，特别是折射率。在这个项目中使用这种方法合成金属氧化物纳米粒子是一种很有前途的技术，但尚未得到充分的研究和利用。它将产生可控尺寸的未凝聚纳米颗粒，克服第一个挑战，并通过适当的气溶胶沉积技术，使具有可控折射率的大面积均匀薄膜成为可能，克服第二个和第三个挑战。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a novel process and platform for the aerosol synthesis of metal-oxide nanoparticles. When coupled with an existing aerosol deposition technology, this aerosol synthesis source will enable the production of the next generation of functional coatings. These include antireflective and self-cleaning coatings for solar modules, novel electrical contacts that reduce silver usage in solar cells, and thermal barrier coatings for windows that increase thermal efficiency. Each of these represents a large addressable market in need of coatings innovation: For example, the coated flat glass market is expected to reach $43.2B in 2025 and the metal-oxide nanoparticle coatings from this project are anticipated to capture at least 10% of that market. Beyond the commercial and related societal impacts of the project, this project will increase the scientific understanding of the nucleation of nanomaterials in the gas phase and the subsequent manipulation of nanoparticles in low-pressure flows. The intellectual merit of this project lies in its development of a new method to synthesize metal-oxide materials in the gas phase, resulting in an aerosol that can be manipulated and deposited on a substrate with gas flows. Prior art for the synthesis of metal-oxide nanoparticles and the subsequent formation of films suffers from three challenges: (1) synthesis methods that utilize high-pressure gas-phase processes tend to create large light-scattering agglomerates that produce hazy films, (2) "wet" synthesis coating techniques can suffer from stability challenges, optical non-uniformities, and processes that are not easily scaled and (3) all methods have limited control of the optical properties of the film, specifically the refractive index. Synthesis of metal-oxide nanoparticles using the approach in this project is a promising, but under-examined and under-utilized, technique. It will generate unagglomerated nanoparticles of controllable size, overcoming the first challenge, and, with suitable aerosol deposition techniques, enable large-area uniform films with controllable refractive index, overcoming the second and third challenges.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.