I-Corps: Chalcogenide Hybrid Inorganic/Organic Polymers (CHIPs) for Infrared Thermal Imaging Technologies

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一类新的红外（IR）光学聚合物材料。 红外热成像的使用（即，“夜视”）长期以来一直用于国防和军事应用。 红外热成像在消费电子、运输、医疗成像、机器人和航空航天工业中也具有巨大的潜力。 阻碍消费者市场大规模实施红外热像仪的关键限制之一是这些成像系统的高成本。 在当前的IR热成像系统中，透射光学元件（例如，透镜，窗）需要使用昂贵的无机元件（例如，锗）。 为了解决这一技术障碍，目标是开发红外光学聚合物，这种聚合物由廉价的起始材料组成，可以很容易地熔融或溶液加工成窗户或透镜。这些材料作为廉价IR塑料的成功实施可以使得能够创建较便宜的IR相机，并且这些IR成像系统有可能进入汽车、住房和医疗成像领域。 这个I-Corps项目是基于硫族化合物混合无机/有机聚合物（CHIP）的开发，这是一类新的合成聚合物，具有增强的红外应用光学性能。 这些聚合物具有迄今为止任何合成聚合物的最高折射率，并且由于共聚物主链中非常高含量的硫-硫（S-S）或硫-硒（Se-S）键，与经典合成聚合物相比具有上级IR透明度。 CHIP材料可以熔化或溶液加工成光学元件，如透镜或窗口，其直接适用于红外热成像。 在拟议的研究中，计划开发改进的合成方法，以实现这些材料的大规模合成，并开发新的增材制造加工方法来制造窗户，透镜和光学元件。 此外，该奖项的目标是将这些聚合物加工的光学元件应用到原型红外热成像系统中，以利用这些新聚合物材料的有利特性。该奖项反映了NSF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 I-Corps project is the development of a new class of infrared (IR) optical polymeric materials. The use of IR thermal imaging (i.e., “night vision”) has long been used for defense and military applications. IR thermal imaging also has significant potential in consumer electronics, transportation, medical imaging, and robotic and aerospace industries. One of the key limitations hindering wide-scale implementation of infrared thermal cameras for consumer markets is the high cost of these imaging systems. In the current IR thermal imaging systems, the transmissive optical elements (e.g., lenses, windows) require the use of expensive inorganic elements (e.g., germanium). To address this technology barrier, the goal is to pursue the development of IR optical polymers, which are composed of inexpensive starting materials and can easily be melt or solution processed into windows or lenses. Successfully implementation of these materials as inexpensive IR plastics may enable creation of less expensive IR cameras and the potential for entry of these IR imaging systems in automobiles, housing, and medical imaging sectors. This I-Corps project is based on the development of Chalcogenide Hybrid Inorganic/Organic Polymers (CHIPs), which are a new class of synthetic polymers with enhanced optical properties for IR applications. These polymers have the highest refractive index of any synthetic polymer to date and possesses superior IR transparency in comparison to classical synthetic polymers due to a very high content of sulfur-sulfur (S-S), or sulfur-selenium (Se-S) bonds in the copolymer backbone. CHIPs materials may be melted or solution processed into optical elements such as lenses or windows, which are directly suitable for IR-thermal imaging. In the proposed research, the plan is to develop improved synthetic methods to enable large-scale synthesis of these materials and new additive manufacturing processing methods to fabricate windows, lenses, and optical elements. In addition, the goal is to implement these polymer-processed optical elements into prototype IR thermal imaging systems to exploit the favorable properties of these new polymeric materials.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.