I-Corps: A Non-Toxic Electrodeposition Process for Structural Color

该I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是开发一种新工艺，以生产环保、低成本和耐用的结构色漆，以解决人们日益关注的通过喷涂颜料基漆（例如汽车工业中使用的颜料基漆）向环境中排放有毒元素的问题。它还提供了一种成本效益高的解决方案，无需使用昂贵的真空设备即可制作结构色。我们提出了一种新的工艺，将3D形状的零件直接浸入到专门制备的无毒化学溶液中，以电化学方式存款多层结构颜色。该工艺的优点有两个方面：（1）它可以潜在地减少20-30%的总涂覆时间;（2）它可以减少50%的喷漆过程中的碳排放和废物产生。此外，结构色可以设计成在任何波长下产生光学共振，这一特性使其与LiDAR系统高度兼容。即将到来的移动和自动驾驶时代为专门制备的与LiDAR系统兼容的反射涂层开辟了广阔的市场，这为光学设计的结构色提供了令人兴奋的机会。最后，由于设计灵活，可以选择用于产生明亮和鲜艳颜色的材料类型，因此可以选择生物相容且可安全穿戴在皮肤上的材料，这可以为我们的技术在化妆品行业的未来应用开辟道路。这个I-Corps项目涉及使用电沉积来产生金属-电介质-金属多层结构彩色涂料，并且与传统的沉积或组装方法相比具有几个明显的优势。与基于颜料的颜色不同，结构色利用光的干涉效应产生颜色。通过简单地调整电沉积的中间腔层的厚度，实现了高亮度的不同颜色。结构色是颜料的环保替代品，与颜料相比，可以产生更明亮、更高效的颜色。然而，由于复杂的制造工艺和用于材料沉积所需的昂贵的真空系统，它们以低成本的广泛应用仍然受到阻碍。为了解决这个问题，我们的创新引入了一种廉价且无毒的台式电沉积方法，用于制造光学质量的薄膜结构色，该方法完全在环境条件下进行，没有腐蚀性试剂，也没有使用任何昂贵的辅助设备。我们的工艺适用于任意形状、尺寸和粗糙度的高度非平面基材，是汽车车身和多种形状内饰部件涂层的理想选择。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，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 I-Corps project will be the development of a novel process to generate environmentally friendly, low-cost and robust structural color paints to address the increasing concerns over emission of toxic elements into the environment by the spray-painting of pigment-based paints, e.g. those used in automobile industry. It also provides a cost-effective solution for making structural colors without using expensive vacuum equipment. We propose a new process to immerse 3D shaped parts directly into specially prepared non-toxic chemical solutions to electrochemically deposit multilayered structural colors. The advantage of this proposed process is twofold: (1) it can potentially reduce the overall coating time by 20-30% (2) it can reduce carbon emissions and waste generation from the spray-painting process by 50%. In addition, structural colors can be designed to produce optical resonances in any wavelength, a property that makes it highly compatible with LiDAR systems. The coming mobility and autonomous driving era have opened a vast market for specially prepared reflective coatings that are specifically compatible with LiDAR systems, which presents an exciting opportunity for the optically designed structural colors. Lastly, because the design is flexible with the type of materials used to generate bright and vibrant colors, one can select materials that are bio-compatible and safe to wear on skin, which can open future applications for our technology in the cosmetics industry. This I-Corps project involves the use of electrodeposition to generate metal-dielectric-metal multilayered structural color paints and has several clear advantages over traditional deposition or assembly methods for preparing colored films. Unlike pigment-based colors, structural colors generate color using the interference effect of light. Different colors of high brightness are achieved by simply tuning the thickness of the electrodeposited middle cavity layer. Structural colors are an environmentally friendly alternative to pigments and generate brighter and more efficient colors compared to pigments. However, their extensive uses at low cost are still hindered due to the complicated fabrication processes and the required expensive vacuum systems for material deposition. To address this issue, our innovation introduces an inexpensive and non-toxic bench-top electrodeposition method for the fabrication of thin film structural colors of optical quality that is entirely performed at ambient conditions without caustic reagents and without the use of any expensive ancillary equipment. Our process is compatible with highly non-planar substrates of arbitrary shape, size and roughness, which could be ideal for the coating of automobile body and many shaped interior parts.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.