I-Corps: Chalcogenide Hybrid Inorganic/Organic Polymers (CHIPs) for Infrared Thermal Imaging Technologies

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a new class of infrared (IR) optical polymeric materials. The use of IR thermal imaging (i.e., “night vision”) has long been used for defense and military applications. IR thermal imaging also has significant potential in consumer electronics, transportation, medical imaging, and robotic and aerospace industries. One of the key limitations hindering wide-scale implementation of infrared thermal cameras for consumer markets is the high cost of these imaging systems. In the current IR thermal imaging systems, the transmissive optical elements (e.g., lenses, windows) require the use of expensive inorganic elements (e.g., germanium). To address this technology barrier, the goal is to pursue the development of IR optical polymers, which are composed of inexpensive starting materials and can easily be melt or solution processed into windows or lenses. Successfully implementation of these materials as inexpensive IR plastics may enable creation of less expensive IR cameras and the potential for entry of these IR imaging systems in automobiles, housing, and medical imaging sectors. This I-Corps project is based on the development of Chalcogenide Hybrid Inorganic/Organic Polymers (CHIPs), which are a new class of synthetic polymers with enhanced optical properties for IR applications. These polymers have the highest refractive index of any synthetic polymer to date and possesses superior IR transparency in comparison to classical synthetic polymers due to a very high content of sulfur-sulfur (S-S), or sulfur-selenium (Se-S) bonds in the copolymer backbone. CHIPs materials may be melted or solution processed into optical elements such as lenses or windows, which are directly suitable for IR-thermal imaging. In the proposed research, the plan is to develop improved synthetic methods to enable large-scale synthesis of these materials and new additive manufacturing processing methods to fabricate windows, lenses, and optical elements. In addition, the goal is to implement these polymer-processed optical elements into prototype IR thermal imaging systems to exploit the favorable properties of these new polymeric materials.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.