BRITE Relaunch: A Liquid Phase Process for Graphene Manufacturing

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。非凡的材料可以由碳制成。富勒烯、碳纳米管和最近的石墨烯由于其特殊的化学、光学、磁性和机械性能而获得了巨大的兴趣。无论是保护金属免受腐蚀，还是使下一代轻质强韧的塑料成为可能，这些新型碳材料都有望实现一个更环保、更可持续的社会。要充分利用这些系统，需要对其制造方法进行变革。研究人员用来制造这些特殊碳的效率极低且耗能的技术，虽然对实验室来说是足够的，但却不适合将它们转化为广泛商业用途所需的大规模和可持续生产。这项促进工程变革和公平进步的研究理念（BRITE）重新启动奖利用了最近的一项发现，该发现将支持在相对低温下制造石墨烯，并将应用这种先进的制造技术来形成复杂形状的磁性聚合物和多孔碳海绵。这种海绵是从受污染的水中去除废物的优良散装材料。这一努力将为迅速发展的石墨烯行业提供另一种制造途径，并为研究生和本科生提供密集的研究培训，旨在提高工程专业STEM本科生的保留率。它还支持工程师可持续材料教育的发展，为评估制造过程的总体影响提供了定量框架。本工作的研究目标是开发和优化碳材料的液相成形工艺。该项目通过直接在液相过程中形成碳材料来解决这一挑战，就像用于制造特种聚合物的过程一样。该方法利用了最近发现的氧化铁细粉可以催化碳纳米材料的形成。通过测量反应过程，实时信息将导致具有定制格式和性能的材料的有效形成。将开发控制算法，利用这些实时信息优化制造。这也将创造关于石墨烯如何在溶液环境中形成的新知识。石墨烯的形成将首先发生在纳米颗粒上，然后是多孔结构和二维石墨烯片。形成的磁性碳也将与聚合物混合，采用三维打印的增材制造方法形成形状的永磁体。这些碳的其他形式，如多孔海绵和薄膜，将应用于水处理和透明电子产品的问题。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 award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Remarkable materials can be engineered from carbon. Fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and most recently graphene have garnered huge interest due to their special chemical, optical, magnetic, and mechanical properties. Whether it is protecting metals from corrosion or enabling the next generation of lightweight and strong plastics, these new carbon materials are poised to enable a greener and more sustainable society. To fully exploit these systems requires transformative approaches to their manufacturing. The highly inefficient and energy consuming techniques used by researchers to make these special carbons, while adequate for the laboratory, are poorly suited to the large scale and sustainable production needed to translate them to widespread commercial use. This Boosting Research Ideas for Transformative and Equitable Advances in Engineering (BRITE) Relaunch award capitalizes on a recent discovery that will support the manufacturing of graphene at relatively low temperatures, and it will apply this advanced manufacturing technique in order to form intricately shaped magnetic polymers as well as porous carbon sponges. Such sponges are excellent bulk materials for removing waste materials from contaminated water. This effort will offer an alternative manufacturing route to the rapidly expanding graphene industry and provide intensive research training for graduate students and undergraduates alike, with efforts aimed at increasing the retention of STEM undergraduates in engineering. It also supports the development of sustainable materials education for engineers, providing a quantitative framework for assessing the overall impact of a manufacturing process. The research goals in this work center on the development and optimization of a liquid phase process for forming carbon materials. This project tackles this challenge by forming carbon materials directly in a liquid phase process, much like processes used to make specialty polymers. The method exploits the recent discovery that a fine powder of iron oxide can catalyze formation of carbon nanomaterials. By instrumenting the reaction process, real-time information will result in the efficient formation of materials with tailored formats and properties. Control algorithms will be developed for optimized manufacturing using this real-time information. This will also create new knowledge about how graphene forms within a solution environment. Graphene formation will first occur on nanoparticles, followed by porous structures and 2D graphene sheets. The magnetic carbons formed will also be blended with polymers in an additive manufacturing approach using three-dimensional printing to form shaped permanent magnets. Other formats of these carbons, such as porous sponges and thin films, will be applied to problems in water treatment and transparent electronics.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.