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用于气溶胶合成金属氧化物纳米颗粒的新工艺和平台。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能够生产下一代功能涂层。这些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使用的新型电触点，以及用于提高热效率的窗户的热障涂层。其中每一个都代表了一个需要涂层创新的大型可寻址市场：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层预计将占据该市场的至少10%。除了该项目的商业和相关社会影响外，该项目还将增加对纳米材料在气相中成核以及随后在低压流中操纵纳米颗粒的科学理解。该项目的智力价值在于它开发了一种新的方法来合成气相中的金属氧化物材料，从而产生一种可以操纵并沉积在气流基底上的气溶胶。用于合成金属氧化物纳米颗粒和随后形成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倾向于产生大的光散射聚集体，其产生模糊的膜，（2）“湿”合成涂布技术可能遭受稳定性挑战，光学不均匀性，和不容易按比例缩放的方法，以及（3）所有方法对膜的光学性质，特别是折射率的控制有限。使用该项目中的方法合成金属氧化物纳米颗粒是一种很有前途的技术，但未得到充分研究和利用。它将产生可控尺寸的未团聚纳米颗粒，克服第一个挑战，并与合适的气溶胶沉积技术，使大面积均匀的薄膜可控折射率，克服第二和第三个挑战。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.