I-Corps: One-dimensional Titania-based Electrodes

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发廉价和绿色的氧气生产。纳米二氧化钛因其在涂料、催化、光催化等领域的广泛应用，一直以来都具有重要的商业价值和研究价值。其中，商业名称为P25的NS二氧化钛占据了很小但很重要的市场份额。P25是通过气体火焰合成法生产的，这是一种相对缓慢和昂贵的方法。然而，这种方法长期以来一直被认为是许多催化和光催化反应的金标准，但它的使用因其高昂的成本而受到限制。如果社会选择使用电化学产生的或绿色的氢气(H2)，那么限速步骤不是在H2电极上，而是在放氧反应(OER)电极上。在商业上，二氧化铱(IrO2)用于OER。Ir是地壳中最稀有的元素之一。除了成本之外，如果绿色氢气大规模生产，世界将迅速遇到严重的供应问题。因此，建议的利用NS-二氧化钛生产氢气的技术可能是一种比此类OER催化剂更便宜、更环保的替代方法。这个I-Corps项目是基于开发负担得起的、稳定的、高效的电解电极。该方法是一种接近环境、极具可扩展性的自下而上的方法，可以将廉价、绿色、充足的水、不溶的无毒前体(如TiC和TiB2)转化为一维、含碳的二氧化钛基纳米纤维(1dT NFS)。在商业上可用的光催化二氧化钛中，Evonik Aeroxide TiO2P25是通过TiCl4火焰热解合成的，由于其在许多反应体系中具有较高的光催化活性而被广泛使用。在许多方面，P25被认为是催化和光催化应用的金标准。然而，它的主要缺点是成本。火焰热解是昂贵的，而且不会产生大量的材料。该项目是一种合成材料的方法，不仅制造成本低得多，而且在包括染料降解和氢气生产在内的几个应用中表现得比P25更好。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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 is the development of cheap and green oxygen production. Nanostructured (NS) titanium dioxides, TiO2, have been, and remain, of significant commercial and research interest due to their use in a wide range of fields including paints, catalysis, photocatalysis, and others. Amongst these, NS TiO2, commercially sold as P25, commands a small, but important market share. P25 is manufactured by gas-flame synthesis, a relatively slow and expensive method. This method has, however, long been considered the gold standard in many catalytic and photocatalytic reactions but its use has been limited by its high cost. Should society elect to run on electrochemically generated, or green, hydrogen (H2), the rate limiting step is not at the H2 electrode, but rather the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrode. Commercially, iridium dioxide (IrO2) is used for OER. Iridium is one of the rarest elements on the Earth's crust. Apart from its cost, the world would rapidly run into serious supply issues if green H2 is mass produced. As a result, the proposed technology for producing H2 using NS TiO2 may be a cheaper and greener alternative to such OER catalysts.This I-Corps project is based on the development of affordable, stable, and high efficiency electrodes for electrolysis. The method is a one pot, near ambient, hugely scalable, bottom-up approach that converts cheap, green, abundant water, insoluble non-toxic precursors such as TiC and TiB2 into one-dimensional, Carbon-containing, titania-based nanofilaments (1DT NFs). Amongst the commercially available photocatalytic titanias, Evonik Aeroxide TiO2 P25, synthesized via flame pyrolysis of TiCl4, is widely used because of its high photocatalytic activity in many reaction systems. In many ways P25 has been considered the gold standard for catalysis and photocatalytic applications. Its major drawback, however, is its cost. Flame pyrolysis is expensive and does not yield large quantities of material. This project is a method of synthesis of materials that are not only significantly cheaper to fabricate but perform better than P25 in several applications including dye degradation and H2 production.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.