Soft Processing to Enable the Low Impact, Sustainable Manufacture of Inorganic Materials and Advanced Inorganic Semiconductor Composites

先进材料的开发和大规模制造是英国政府强调的推动经济增长的“八大技术”之一。具有特定光学和电学性能的先进复合材料的生产是这一领域的关键研究领域。将半导体材料融入纸、塑料、聚合物和纺织品等主体材料中，对于生产用于个人能源发电或健康监测的印刷和可穿戴智能技术是有意义的。然而，尽管在这一领域进行了研究，但目前生产先进材料(例如半导体)的许多途径都需要高温处理步骤，限制了可以使用的基质基质，或者需要高真空，这限制了可扩展性。在这项建议中，我们通过使用软加工(即，低温和200℃，环境压力)直接解决这一制造限制，以实现一系列金属硫化物半导体聚合物复合材料的潜在可扩展生产。我们将展示，我们的加工路线适合于生产一系列维度范围(即1D、2D、3D)的二元、三元和四元金属硫化物聚合物组合物，并受加工路线的明智选择控制。最后，我们将展示我们提出的制造路线如何与激光印刷兼容，并将产生世界上第一个用于铜/锌/锡硫化物系统的麦克斯韦颜色三角的例子。成功的结果将是为一系列先进的半导体复合材料开发新的软加工路线，这将减少材料制造对未来几代人的经济和环境影响。我们正在提议的制造工艺允许设计和实现一系列具有未知但潜在优势的新产品。此外，激光印刷作为这里提出的研究实现的制造路线的出现，将使这些材料的加工和制造方式发生重大变化，允许在廉价、轻和灵活的基板(如纸张或乙酸酯)上进行高通量印刷，用于建筑集成光伏、个人能源发电或可穿戴传感器等应用。

The development and large scale manufacture of advanced materials is one of the 'eight great technologies' that have been highlighted by the British Government that should be pursued to drive economic growth. The production of advanced composites with defined optical and electronic properties is a key area of research in this remit. The incorporation of semiconductor materials into host materials such as paper, plastics, polymers and textiles is of interest for the production of printed and wearable smart technology for personal energy generation or for health monitoring. However, despite research efforts in this area, many of the current pathways to produce advanced materials, for example semiconductors, require high temperature processing steps that limit the host matrix that can be used, or require high vacuum which limits scalability. In this proposal we directly address this manufacturing limitation by using soft processing (i.e. low temperature <200 C, ambient pressure) to enable the potentially scalable production of a range of metal sulfide semiconductor polymer composites. We will show that our processing route is suitable for producing a range of binary, tertiary and quaternary metal sulfide polymer composities in a range of dimensionalities (i.e. 1D, 2D 3D), controlled by judicious choice of processing route. Finally, we will demonstrate how the manufacturing route we propose is compatible with laser printing, and will produce the world's first example of a Maxwell colour triangle for the Cu/Zn/Sn sulfide system.Successful outcomes will be in the development of new soft processing pathways for a range of advanced semiconductor composites, which could lessen the economic and environmental impact of material manufacture for future generations. The manufacturing processes that we are proposing allow the design and realisation of a suite of new products with as yet unknown, but potentially advantageous, properties. Additionally, the advent of laser printing as a manufacturing route enabled by the research proposed here would provide a significant step change in the way that these materials can be processed and manufactured allowing high throughput printing of semiconductor arrays on inexpensive, light and flexible substrates such as paper or acetates for applications such as building integrated PV, personal energy generation or wearable sensors.