SBIR Phase I: Scalable Electrochemical Production Of Carbon Nanotubes From Carbon Dioxide

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的广泛影响/商业潜力将解决先进材料在商业市场上广泛使用的关键瓶颈。碳纳米管是一种先进的超级材料，自20世纪90年代初被发现以来一直处于技术创新的前沿，但由于其生产成本高，商业上的成功有限。目前碳纳米管材料的使用仅限于少数能够吸收研究规模碳纳米管的高成本的行业（国防应用，航空航天制造商和研究机构）。实现可扩展的、低成本的碳纳米管制造工艺将实现广泛的应用，如：成本更低、重量更轻、寿命更长的先进电池，寿命更长、燃油效率更高的轮胎，以及增强功能的涂层，如飞机、航天器和无人机的除冰。这一进步的社会影响包括为消费者提供更好的性能和更节能的设备，而不增加成本。这项技术的商业影响将使许多市场部门进行重大努力，以评估和了解碳纳米管对产品的好处，并在经济上实现。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将开发一种新的电化学液相生长碳纳米管生产方法，这将大大降低碳纳米管的生产成本，并使材料的广泛商业应用成为可能。目前碳纳米管利用的最大瓶颈是生产成本高，这是由许多因素引起的，包括化学过程效率低，缩放的间接成本高，以及需要额外成本的有毒副产物的形成。这些限制导致了材料的高价格，禁止它们在成本敏感的市场上使用，这些市场依赖于低成本的添加剂，如炭黑。这个SBIR项目的研究目标将证明使用可扩展的催化剂制备和沉积技术通过低成本、环保的电化学途径生产碳纳米管的可行性。为了实现这一目标，我们将利用环境处理来制备催化剂和可扩展的电化学反应室，该反应室利用电化学的精度，直接从空气中获取碳原料，并以极高的能源效率（90%）运行。预期的技术成果包括一种快速、可扩展的生长技术，在不影响碳纳米管质量的情况下，将催化剂沉积的额外成本降至最低。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will address a critical bottleneck to widespread advanced material use in commercial markets. Carbon nanotubes are advanced supermaterials that have been at the forefront of technological innovation since their discovery in the early 1990s, but limited commercial success has ensued due to their high cost of production. Current use of carbon nanotube materials is limited to a few industries capable of absorbing the high cost of research-scale quantities of carbon nanotubes (defense applications, aerospace manufacturers, and research institutions). Achieving scalable, lower-cost carbon nanotube manufacturing processes will enable widespread applications such as: advanced batteries with lower cost, weight, and improved longevity, tires with longer lifetimes and increased fuel efficiency, and coatings enabling enhanced functionality such as in the case of de-icing for aircrafts, spacecraft vehicles, and drones. The societal impact of this advancement includes better performing and more energy efficient devices for consumers without added cost. The commercial impact of this technology will enable the significant effort carried out in many market sectors to evaluate and understand the benefit of carbon nanotubes to products, to be economically realized. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a novel electrochemical liquid-phase growth method for carbon nanotube production, which significantly lowers the cost of production for carbon nanotubes and enables widespread commercial use of the materials. The largest bottleneck to carbon nanotube utilization today is the high production cost that arises due to numerous factors including low efficiency of chemical processes, high overhead cost for scaling, and formation of toxic by-products that require additional costs. These limitations have led to high prices for the materials that prohibit their use in cost-sensitive markets, which rely on low-cost additives such as carbon black. The research objectives of this SBIR project will demonstrate feasibility of using a scalable catalyst preparation and deposition technique for the production of carbon nanotubes through low-cost, environmentally-beneficial electrochemical routes. To achieve this, we will utilize ambient processing for catalyst preparation and a scalable electrochemical reaction chamber that harnesses the precision of electrochemistry, sources the carbon feedstock directly from air, and operates at extremely high energy efficiencies (90%). The anticipated technical results include a rapid and scalable growth technique with minimized added cost from catalyst deposition without compromising carbon nanotube quality.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.