SBIR Phase II: Structural Color for Sustainable Printing

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是将油墨、油漆和其他有色涂料中的一种新颖和可持续的颜色方法商业化。该项目开发了用于结构颜色的材料平台，这是一种颜色生成方法，可以成为当前着色技术(如有机染料、无机颜料和效果颜料)的一种环境更安全的替代方法，还可以消除许多常见的配方挑战。这里开发的技术是一种插入式聚合物粘合剂，可以取代或与商业墨水粘合剂共存，提供无需颜料或染料的着色。这些材料的设计材料与食品包装中常见的广泛使用的聚合物所用的构建块相同。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目解决了与刷子嵌段共聚物光子晶体商业化相关的主要风险和技术挑战。这种先进的材料平台是大面积反光材料的理想选择，因为原材料成本低，而且通过大分子自组装的“自下而上”制造简单。为了实现真正的商业用途，将进一步开发用于生产聚合物积木的化学物质和喷墨打印沉积方法，以获得结构彩色油墨。该第二阶段项目的活动将开发用于商业规模的可行化学物质，建立工业喷墨工艺的大规模沉积方法，在自组装的时间尺度上实施兼容的交联策略，并对第一个可调打印结构彩色墨水系统的色域进行表征和改进。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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 II project is to commercialize a novel and sustainable approach to color in inks, paints and other colored coatings. The project develops a materials platform for structural color, a method of color generation that can be an environmentally safer alternative to current coloration techniques (such as organic dyes, inorganic pigments, and effect pigments) and also can eliminate many common formulation challenges. The technology developed here is a drop-in polymer binder that can replace or co-exist with commercial ink binders, providing coloration without pigments or dyes. The materials are designed from the same building blocks that constitute widely utilized polymers commonly found in food packaging. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project addresses key risks and technical challenges associated with commercializing brush block copolymer based photonic crystals. This advanced materials platform is ideal for large-area reflective materials due to the low cost of the raw materials and the simplicity of "bottom-up" fabrication by macromolecular self-assembly. To achieve real-world commercial use, both the chemistries used in production of the polymeric building blocks and the inkjet printing deposition methods of the resulting structural color inks will be further developed. The activities in this Phase II project will develop viable chemistries for commercial scaling, establish a large-scale deposition method with industrial inkjet processes, implement cross-linking strategies compatible on the time-scale of self-assembly, and characterize and improve upon the color gamut of the first tunable printable structural color ink system.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.