BRITE Relaunch: A Liquid Phase Process for Graphene Manufacturing

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。可再生材料可以从碳中制造出来。富勒烯、碳纳米管和最近的石墨烯由于其特殊的化学、光学、磁性和机械性能而引起了人们的极大兴趣。无论是保护金属免受腐蚀，还是使下一代轻质、坚固的塑料成为可能，这些新的碳材料将使社会变得更加绿色和可持续。要充分利用这些系统，需要对其制造采取变革性的方法。研究人员用于制造这些特殊碳的高度低效和耗能的技术，尽管对实验室来说是足够的，但不太适合将它们转化为广泛商业用途所需的大规模和可持续生产。这个促进工程转型和公平进展的研究想法(BRITE)重新启动奖利用了一项最新发现，该发现将支持在相对较低的温度下制造石墨烯，并将应用这种先进的制造技术来形成形状复杂的磁性聚合物以及多孔碳海绵。这种海绵是从受污染的水中去除废物的极佳散装材料。这一努力将为快速发展的石墨烯行业提供另一条制造路线，并为研究生和本科生提供密集的研究培训，旨在增加STEM本科生在工程学方面的留存率。它还支持为工程师发展可持续的材料教育，为评估制造过程的整体影响提供一个量化框架。这项工作的研究目标是开发和优化碳材料的液态成型工艺。该项目通过在液态过程中直接形成碳材料来应对这一挑战，很像用于制造特种聚合物的过程。该方法利用了最近的一项发现，即细小的氧化铁粉末可以催化形成碳纳米材料。通过检测反应过程，实时信息将导致具有定制格式和性能的材料的高效形成。将利用这些实时信息开发用于优化制造的控制算法。这也将创造关于石墨烯在溶液环境中如何形成的新知识。石墨烯的形成首先发生在纳米颗粒上，然后是多孔结构和2D石墨烯薄片。形成的磁性碳还将以一种添加制造方法与聚合物混合，使用三维打印形成成形的永久磁体。这些碳的其他形式，如多孔海绵和薄膜，将被应用于水处理和透明电子的问题。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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Remarkable materials can be engineered from carbon. Fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and most recently graphene have garnered huge interest due to their special chemical, optical, magnetic, and mechanical properties. Whether it is protecting metals from corrosion or enabling the next generation of lightweight and strong plastics, these new carbon materials are poised to enable a greener and more sustainable society. To fully exploit these systems requires transformative approaches to their manufacturing. The highly inefficient and energy consuming techniques used by researchers to make these special carbons, while adequate for the laboratory, are poorly suited to the large scale and sustainable production needed to translate them to widespread commercial use. This Boosting Research Ideas for Transformative and Equitable Advances in Engineering (BRITE) Relaunch award capitalizes on a recent discovery that will support the manufacturing of graphene at relatively low temperatures, and it will apply this advanced manufacturing technique in order to form intricately shaped magnetic polymers as well as porous carbon sponges. Such sponges are excellent bulk materials for removing waste materials from contaminated water. This effort will offer an alternative manufacturing route to the rapidly expanding graphene industry and provide intensive research training for graduate students and undergraduates alike, with efforts aimed at increasing the retention of STEM undergraduates in engineering. It also supports the development of sustainable materials education for engineers, providing a quantitative framework for assessing the overall impact of a manufacturing process. The research goals in this work center on the development and optimization of a liquid phase process for forming carbon materials. This project tackles this challenge by forming carbon materials directly in a liquid phase process, much like processes used to make specialty polymers. The method exploits the recent discovery that a fine powder of iron oxide can catalyze formation of carbon nanomaterials. By instrumenting the reaction process, real-time information will result in the efficient formation of materials with tailored formats and properties. Control algorithms will be developed for optimized manufacturing using this real-time information. This will also create new knowledge about how graphene forms within a solution environment. Graphene formation will first occur on nanoparticles, followed by porous structures and 2D graphene sheets. The magnetic carbons formed will also be blended with polymers in an additive manufacturing approach using three-dimensional printing to form shaped permanent magnets. Other formats of these carbons, such as porous sponges and thin films, will be applied to problems in water treatment and transparent electronics.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.