I-Corps: Technology Transfer for Commercialization of Industrial, Electronic and Medical Device Products Based on a Patented Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Coating

产品可靠性是任何一家公司担心并提供给客户的主要问题之一。例如，恶劣的锂离子电池环境对金属基阳极和阴极的化学侵蚀大大缩短了电池的寿命，并极大地降低了电池的性能。目前植入人体的髋关节和膝盖等金属假体会受到体液的腐蚀，导致疼痛，需要及早进行置换。I-Corps团队专注于确定和开发新型专利超非晶金刚石(UNCD)薄膜的商业化途径，将其用作暴露在恶劣化学和机械环境中的工业、电子和医疗设备/系统的关键部件的涂层，将其寿命和性能提高至少一个数量级。拟议工作的重点将是探索将具有UNCD涂层的阳极、阴极、膜和内壁外壳的新一代锂离子电池(LIB)推向市场，以生产寿命超过现有LIB的10倍以上、尺寸更小的LIB，因为UNCD涂层对所有电池组件的保护作用使其免受腐蚀。这项技术将用于投币式手机小型电池。UNCD涂层的另一个应用将是医疗设备和植入物，该团队所做的初步工作已经证明，UNCD涂层可以使新一代医疗植入物具有比当前未涂层的金属植入物(例如，髋关节、膝盖、牙科植入物，由于体液的化学附着而失败)具有更长的寿命和更好的性能的数量级。获得专利的UNCD涂层将使用该团队可用的微波等离子体化学气相沉积(MPCVD)和热丝化学气相沉积(HFCVD)技术来生长，以确定哪种涂层为特定应用提供了最佳的涂层性能。过去20年的研究工作表明，UNCD薄膜具有独特的纳米结构和独特的性能组合，即：1)与任何其他已知涂层相比，最高的硬度和耐磨性(类似于单晶金刚石)，2)极其光滑的表面(RMS粗糙度为~3-5 nm)，3)与任何其他涂层相比，3)最低的摩擦系数，4)极低的应力，5)表面润湿性的可调性，从高度疏水(表面不粘水)到高度亲水(高附水)，6)极耐任何强酸和人体流体的化学侵蚀(对于医疗植入物涂层的应用至关重要)，7)当掺杂金刚石晶格中的硼原子或晶界中的氮原子时导电，8)在不掺入B或N的情况下生长时电绝缘，9)与其他电极材料相比，掺B的UNCD显示出最宽的电化学势，10)UNCD薄膜表现出最低的电子发射阈值电压之一，11)UNCD薄膜可以通过光刻和蚀刻工艺来处理，用于制造硅基MEMS/NEMS器件，以制造远远优于硅基对应器件的新一代这些器件，12)联合国疾病控制与预防中心具有极强的生物兼容性。上述联合国开发计划的特性使上述广泛的技术应用具有多种功能，可在几个高技术市场产生重大影响。MPCVD技术将被植入能够在直径达200毫米的衬底上生长UNCD薄膜的工业型系统中，以展示UNCD生长过程立即转变为工业兼容过程。HFCVD技术将在一个能够在直径达100毫米的衬底上生长UNCD薄膜的系统中实施。

Product reliability is one of the main issues that any company worries about and offers to the customers. For example, chemical attack of metal-based anodes and cathodes by the harsh Li-ion battery environment shortens substantially the battery lifetime and strongly reduces it performance. Current metallic prostheses, such as hips and knees, implanted in humans, exhibit corrosion by body fluids, resulting in pain and need for early replacement. This I-CORPS team focuses on identifying and developing the commercialization pathway for novel patented ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) films as coatings for critical components of industrial, electronic, and medical devices/systems exposed to harsh chemically and mechanical environments, improving their lifetime and performance by at least one order of magnitude. The focus of the proposed effort will be to explore the insertion into the market of a new generation of Li-ion batteries (LIBs) with UNCD-coated anodes, cathodes, membranes, and inner walls case, to produce LIBs with ¡Ý 10x longer life and smaller dimensions than for current LIBs, due to the protective action of the UNCD coatings on all battery components from corrosion. The technology will be demonstrated for coin-type cell phone small batteries. The other application of UNCD coatings will be for medical devices and implants, for which preliminary work done by this team group has demonstrated that UNCD coatings can enable a new generation of medical implants with order of magnitude longer life and superior performance than current uncoated metal implants (e.g., hips, knees, dental implants, which are failing due to chemical attach by body fluids), which are failing due to chemical attack by body fluids.The patented UNCD coatings will be grown using microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) and hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) techniques, available to the team, to determine which provides the best coating properties for the specific application. The research work over the last 20 years has demonstrated that the UNCD films exhibit unique nanostructures with 3 to 5 nm grain sizes, and a unique combination of properties, namely: 1) highest hardness and resistance to wear (similar to single crystal diamond) compared to any other known coating, 2) extremely smooth surface (rms roughness of ~ 3-5 nm), 3) lowest friction coefficient compared to any other coatings, 4) extremely low stress, 5) tunability of surface wettability from highly hydrophobic (no water adhesion to the surface) to highly hydrophilic (high water adhesion), 6) extremely resistant to chemical attack by any strong acid and human body fluids (critical for applications as coating for medical implants), 7) electrically conductive when doped with boron atoms in the diamond lattice or nitrogen atoms in the grain boundaries, 8) electrically insulating when grown without B or N incorporation, 9) B-doped UNCD exhibits the widest electrochemical potential compared with other electrode materials, 10) UNCD films exhibit one of the lowest threshold voltages for electron emission, 11) UNCD films can be processed by lithography and etching processes used for fabrication of silicon based MEMS/NEMS devices, to produce a new generation of these devices far superior than silicon based counterparts, and 12) UNCD is extremely biocompatible. The UNCD properties mentioned above enable multi-functionalities for a wide range of technological applications as described above, which can make a substantial impact in several high-tech markets. The MPCVD technique will be implanted in an industrial-type system capable of growing UNCD films on up to 200 mm diameter substrates to demonstrate immediate transfer of the UNCD growth process into an industrial compatible process. The HFCVD technique will be implemented in a system capable of growing UNCD films on up to 100 mm diameter substrates.