Laser Chip Lithography-Patterned Nanomembranes for Wastewater Treatment

对油气井水力压裂对环境影响的担忧日益加剧，促使对废水管理制定了严格的法规。聚合物膜具有能源效率高、占地面积小、成本低等优点，为废水的回收利用提供了一种很有吸引力的方法。然而，这种膜经常受到废水中污染物的表面污染，严重限制了其广泛应用。开发一种能有效控制膜表面性质的节能膜纳米图案化技术，以获得优异的抗污染性能，以实现废水的回收和回用，势在必行。该奖项是为了开发一种基于激光芯片的纳米级光刻方法，用于灵活和高通量的膜表面纳米图案处理，用于废水处理。这项研究涉及多个科学和工程学科，包括纳米制造、光学设计、建模、制造和表征、聚合物科学和加工以及膜开发。这些学科将被整合到课程开发和现有的外展教育活动中，为研究生、本科生和K-12学生提供动手研究的机会，特别是对那些来自代表性不足的群体的学生。用高通量光刻在膜上印刷纳米级图案是减少表面污染的有效方法。然而，紫外光光源固有的不灵活性和要求导致了纳米制造过程的高生产成本和低能效。本研究项目的主要目的是开发一种新的低成本、高能效的纳米制造工艺，直接使用激光芯片进行光刻。将设计一个由数百万个单独的微激光腔组成的单一蓝光激光芯片，并利用该芯片将纳米级激光模式图案转移到聚合物膜的表面。这些表面纳米粒子可以通过操纵腔体共振模式来灵活控制，以优化膜表面的抗污染性能。跨学科的工程师团队带来了光电子器件、纳米制造、聚合物加工和膜防污染应用方面的专业知识，以解决技术的各个方面。该项目开发的基于激光芯片的光刻技术将代表着灵活和高通量纳米级图案化方面的重要技术突破，创造出用于废水处理的坚固的纳米级图案膜，并实现对环境负责的能源生产方式。

Growing concerns over the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells have prompted stringent regulations on wastewater management. Polymeric membranes offer an attractive approach to recover and reuse the wastewater due to high energy efficiency, small footprint, and low cost. However, the membranes are often subjected to surface fouling by the contaminants in the wastewater, severely limiting their wide adoption. It is imperative to develop an energy-efficient membrane nano patterning technology that can effectively control the membrane surface properties to achieve excellent antifouling properties for wastewater recovery and reuse. This award is to develop a laser chips-based nanoscale photolithography approach for flexible and high-throughput membrane surface nano patterning for wastewater treatment. This research involves multiple disciplines of science and engineering including nanomanufacturing, optical design, modeling, fabrication and characterization, polymer science and processing, and membrane development. These disciplines will be integrated into curriculum development and existing outreach educational activities to provide hands-on research opportunities for graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students, especially for those from underrepresented groups.Printing nanoscale patterns on membranes with high throughput photolithography is an effective approach to mitigate surface fouling. Nevertheless, the intrinsic inflexibility and requirement of UV light sources lead to high production cost and low energy efficiency for the nanomanufacturing process. The primary focus of this research project is to develop a novel low-cost and energy-efficient nanomanufacturing process by directly using laser chips for photolithography. A single blue-light laser chip consisting of millions of individual micro-laser cavities will be designed and utilized to transfer the nanoscale laser mode patterns to the surface of polymeric membranes. These surface nanopatterns can be flexibly controlled by manipulating the cavity resonant modes to optimize the membrane surface antifouling properties. The interdisciplinary team of engineers brings expertise in optoelectronic devices, nanomanufacturing, polymer processing and membrane antifouling applications to address the various aspects of the technology. The laser chips-based lithography developed in this project will represent an important technological breakthrough in flexible and high throughput nanoscale patterning, creating robust nanoscale-patterned membranes for wastewater treatment and enabling an environmentally responsible way for energy production.