I-Corps: A Non-Toxic Electrodeposition Process for Structural Color

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will be the development of a novel process to generate environmentally friendly, low-cost and robust structural color paints to address the increasing concerns over emission of toxic elements into the environment by the spray-painting of pigment-based paints, e.g. those used in automobile industry. It also provides a cost-effective solution for making structural colors without using expensive vacuum equipment. We propose a new process to immerse 3D shaped parts directly into specially prepared non-toxic chemical solutions to electrochemically deposit multilayered structural colors. The advantage of this proposed process is twofold: (1) it can potentially reduce the overall coating time by 20-30% (2) it can reduce carbon emissions and waste generation from the spray-painting process by 50%. In addition, structural colors can be designed to produce optical resonances in any wavelength, a property that makes it highly compatible with LiDAR systems. The coming mobility and autonomous driving era have opened a vast market for specially prepared reflective coatings that are specifically compatible with LiDAR systems, which presents an exciting opportunity for the optically designed structural colors. Lastly, because the design is flexible with the type of materials used to generate bright and vibrant colors, one can select materials that are bio-compatible and safe to wear on skin, which can open future applications for our technology in the cosmetics industry. This I-Corps project involves the use of electrodeposition to generate metal-dielectric-metal multilayered structural color paints and has several clear advantages over traditional deposition or assembly methods for preparing colored films. Unlike pigment-based colors, structural colors generate color using the interference effect of light. Different colors of high brightness are achieved by simply tuning the thickness of the electrodeposited middle cavity layer. Structural colors are an environmentally friendly alternative to pigments and generate brighter and more efficient colors compared to pigments. However, their extensive uses at low cost are still hindered due to the complicated fabrication processes and the required expensive vacuum systems for material deposition. To address this issue, our innovation introduces an inexpensive and non-toxic bench-top electrodeposition method for the fabrication of thin film structural colors of optical quality that is entirely performed at ambient conditions without caustic reagents and without the use of any expensive ancillary equipment. Our process is compatible with highly non-planar substrates of arbitrary shape, size and roughness, which could be ideal for the coating of automobile body and many shaped interior parts.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.