Scalable, versatile surface engineering through photo-initiated chemical vapour deposition

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Surface engineering alters our first interaction with a material - it affects wettability, corrosion, refractive index, thermal conductivity, dispersion (for particles) and adhesion. It is exploited in a wide variety of industries, from aerospace to microelectronics, but scalable techniques for its implementation remains out-of-reach for applications with tighter profit margins, such as agriculture, water capture, 3D printing, etc. The long-term objective of our research aims to democratize surface engineering by developing new and innovative approaches for scalable treatment. Over the past years, our team has spearheaded the development of photo-initiated chemical vapour deposition (PICVD), an atmospheric pressure, solvent-free, gas-phase approach that functionnalizes a wide variety of surfaces (e.g. metal, polymers, wood, nanomaterials), using commercially ubiquitous UVC light sources and affordable syngas (CO, H2). This scalable approach has attracted the attention of multiple industrial partners and led to valuable collaborations, namely because it can form a strong covalent bond without solvent-based chemistry (often complex, multi-step, with toxic reagents), and without the shortcomings of thermally-activated CVD (heat-sensitive substrates) or plasma-enhanced CVD (expensive infrastructure and operating conditions). It also avoids the use of costly, low-wavelength vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) lamps, privileged by the pioneers of PICVD, and their related shortcomings (similar to plasma). To accelerate transfer to Canadian companies, key scientific and engineering challenges must be met, namely with regards to refine the process kinetics, reduce the environmental footprint and increase the range of functional groups possible. We aim to meet these short-term objectives through 3 high-impact PhD projects over the next 5 years: (1) Synthesize photo-sensitive compounds from CO and H2 to promote reaction initiation. Metal carbonyls are the first targets for this project, given that iron pentacarbonyl (Fe(CO)5) has already shown that it affects our reactions (impact: increase treatment speed and repeatability); (2) Photo-reduce CO2 with UVC light (potentially from mercury-free LED lamps) and affordable catalysts to generate CO or photo-sensitive compounds, thereby leveraging the surface engineering process to sequester and utilize carbon (impact: reduce footprint); (3) Graft functional sulfur- and nitrogen-containing compounds onto PICVD-treated surfaces to promote selective attachment of molecules (such as proteins) - this has never been accomplished through atmospheric photo-processing (impact: increase applications). Accomplishing these objectives will lead to major impact in the economy, specifically through effects in the manufacturing sector (where thin films and coatings are a multi-billion-dollar industry) and through training of highly qualified personnel (3 PhDs, 10 undergrads) with high-value skills transferrable to Canadian industry.