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

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是发展一种新工艺，生产环保、低成本和坚固的结构彩色涂料，以解决越来越多的关注，即通过喷漆颜料为基础的油漆（例如用于汽车工业的油漆）向环境中排放有毒元素。它还为不使用昂贵的真空设备制作结构色提供了经济有效的解决方案。我们提出了一种新的工艺，将3D成形的零件直接浸入专门制备的无毒化学溶液中，以电化学沉积多层结构色。该工艺的优势是双重的：(1)它可以潜在地减少20-30%的整体涂层时间(2)它可以减少50%的碳排放和喷漆过程中的废物产生。此外，结构颜色可以设计成在任何波长产生光学共振，这一特性使其与激光雷达系统高度兼容。即将到来的移动出行和自动驾驶时代为与LiDAR系统特别兼容的特殊制备的反射涂层开辟了广阔的市场，这为光学设计的结构颜色提供了令人兴奋的机会。最后，由于设计是灵活的材料类型，用于产生明亮和充满活力的颜色，人们可以选择生物相容性和安全的材料，这可以打开我们的技术在化妆品行业的未来应用。这个I-Corps项目涉及使用电沉积来生成金属-介电-金属多层结构彩色涂料，与制备彩色薄膜的传统沉积或组装方法相比，它有几个明显的优势。与基于颜料的颜色不同，结构色利用光的干涉效应产生颜色。通过简单地调整电沉积中腔层的厚度，可以实现不同颜色的高亮度。结构色是一种环保的颜料替代品，与颜料相比，它能产生更明亮、更有效的颜色。然而，由于复杂的制造工艺和需要昂贵的真空系统来沉积材料，它们在低成本下的广泛应用仍然受到阻碍。为了解决这个问题，我们的创新引入了一种廉价无毒的台式电沉积方法，用于制造具有光学质量的薄膜结构色，完全在环境条件下进行，不使用苛性试剂，也不使用任何昂贵的辅助设备。我们的工艺与任意形状、尺寸和粗糙度的高度非平面基底兼容，可以理想地用于汽车车身和许多异形内饰件的涂层。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。

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.