PFI-RP: Artificial colors made sustainable

创新伙伴关系-研究伙伴关系（PFI-RP）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力探索了一种可持续的方式来为我们周围的世界增添色彩。这项技术在车身喷漆、结构和非结构装饰（包括具有复杂几何形状的装饰，如静态密封、标志等）以及铬替代品方面具有商业和可持续发展潜力。所提出的技术适用于交通、基础设施和许多其他应用的内外饰面。目前，人类每天使用约3万吨化学色素，对环境造成影响。一些着色剂产品或工艺是有害的。天然着色剂不能满足某些应用的所有要求。人造结构色可以解决一些与天然色素相关的问题，包括长期可持续性。与工业界拟议的伙伴关系将提供机会进行广泛的客户发现，提供急需的信息和指导，将技术转化为现实世界的应用，特别是在选择最适合市场和最可能的商业化途径方面。提议的项目探索光与人造物理结构的相互作用，产生强烈的颜色反射或透射。这种结构色因其与天然色素相比的各种优势而受到关注，并且可以补充传统颜料，增强视觉效果和增加耐用性。这种人造“色彩”几乎可以设计在任何波段，为目标产品和应用提供设计自由。层状薄膜叠层结构可以产生具有高亮度和高色度的大范围颜色。制造过程只需要薄膜沉积，这提供了可扩展性。基于机器学习的逆光学设计促进了“数字代码”的生成，这些代码可以用分层结构进行复制，以生成所需的颜色。大多数颜色都可以通过这种方式产生，包括那些在大量应用中使用的非常理想的铬色外观。为了降低制造成本，将开发具有成本效益的、基于解决方案的方法。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 Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project explores a sustainable way to color the world around us. This technology has both commercial and sustainability potential as an application for vehicle body paint, structural and non-structural trim (including trim with complex geometries such as static sealing, emblems, etc.), as well as chrome replacements. The proposed technology is applicable to exterior and interior trim surfaces for transportation, infrastructure, and many other applications. Currently, humans use about 30,000 tons of chemical colorant pigments every day, creating environment impact. Some colorant products or processes are hazardous. Natural colorant pigments cannot satisfy all the requirements for certain applications. Artificially-made structural color may address some of the issues associated with natural pigment including long-term sustainability. A proposed partnership with industry will provide the opportunity to conduct extensive customer discovery, offering much needed information and guidance to translate the technology to real world applications, especially in selecting the best market-fit and most probable path toward commercialization. The proposed project explores light interaction with a man-made physical structure that produces strong color reflection or transmission. Such structural colors have received interest due to their various advantages over the natural colorants and can complement traditional pigments with enhanced visual effects and increased durability. Such artificial “color” can be designed at virtually any spectrum band, providing design freedom for the targetted products and applications. Layered thin film stack structures can create a wide-range of colors with high brightness and high chroma. The fabrication procedures only require thin film deposition, which offers scalability. Machine learning-based inverse optical design facilitates the generation of the “digital code” that can be reproduced with layered structures to generate the desired color. Most of the colors can be produced this way, including those with a highly desirable chrome look used in a vast number of applications. To lower the manufacturing cost, cost-effective, solution-based methods will be developed.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.