Scalable, versatile surface engineering through photo-initiated chemical vapour deposition

表面工程改变了我们与材料的第一次相互作用--它影响润湿性、腐蚀性、折射率、导热系数、分散性(颗粒)和附着力。它被广泛应用于从航空航天到微电子的各种行业，但对于利润率较低的应用，如农业、取水、3D打印等，实现其可扩展技术仍然遥不可及。我们研究的长期目标旨在通过开发可扩展处理的新的创新方法来实现表面工程的民主化。在过去的几年里，我们的团队带头开发了光引发化学气相沉积(PICVD)，这是一种常压、无溶剂的气相方法，使用商业上普遍存在的UVC光源和负担得起的合成气体(CO、H2)，使各种表面(如金属、聚合物、木材、纳米材料)功能化。这种可扩展的方法吸引了多个工业伙伴的注意，并导致了宝贵的合作，这是因为它可以在没有溶剂型化学物质(通常是复杂的、多步骤的、带有有毒试剂的)的情况下形成强大的共价键，并且没有热激活CVD(热敏底物)或等离子体增强CVD(昂贵的基础设施和操作条件)的缺点。它还避免了使用昂贵的低波长真空紫外线(VUV)灯，这是PICVD先驱的特权，也避免了它们的相关缺点(类似于等离子体)。为了加快向加拿大公司的转移，必须应对关键的科学和工程挑战，即完善过程动力学，减少环境足迹，并尽可能增加官能团的范围。我们的目标是在未来5年通过3个高影响力的博士项目来实现这些短期目标：(1)从CO和H2合成光敏化合物以促进反应引发。金属羰基化合物是这个项目的第一个目标，因为五甲基铁(Fe(CO)5)已经表明它影响了我们的反应(影响：提高处理速度和可重复性)；(2)利用UVC光(可能来自无汞LED灯)和负担得起的催化剂来光还原二氧化碳，以产生CO或光敏化合物，从而利用表面工程过程来隔离和利用碳(影响：减少足迹)；(3)将功能性含硫和含氮化合物嫁接到经PICVD处理的表面，以促进分子(如蛋白质)的选择性附着--这从未通过大气光处理实现(影响：增加应用)。实现这些目标将对经济产生重大影响，特别是通过对制造业(薄膜和涂层是一个价值数十亿美元的行业)的影响，以及通过培训具有高价值技能的高素质人员(3名博士，10名本科生)，这些技能可以转移到加拿大工业。

Surface engineering alters our first interaction with a material - it affects wettability, corrosion, refractive index, thermal conductivity, dispersion (for particles) and adhesion. It is exploited in a wide variety of industries, from aerospace to microelectronics, but scalable techniques for its implementation remains out-of-reach for applications with tighter profit margins, such as agriculture, water capture, 3D printing, etc. The long-term objective of our research aims to democratize surface engineering by developing new and innovative approaches for scalable treatment. Over the past years, our team has spearheaded the development of photo-initiated chemical vapour deposition (PICVD), an atmospheric pressure, solvent-free, gas-phase approach that functionnalizes a wide variety of surfaces (e.g. metal, polymers, wood, nanomaterials), using commercially ubiquitous UVC light sources and affordable syngas (CO, H2). This scalable approach has attracted the attention of multiple industrial partners and led to valuable collaborations, namely because it can form a strong covalent bond without solvent-based chemistry (often complex, multi-step, with toxic reagents), and without the shortcomings of thermally-activated CVD (heat-sensitive substrates) or plasma-enhanced CVD (expensive infrastructure and operating conditions). It also avoids the use of costly, low-wavelength vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) lamps, privileged by the pioneers of PICVD, and their related shortcomings (similar to plasma). To accelerate transfer to Canadian companies, key scientific and engineering challenges must be met, namely with regards to refine the process kinetics, reduce the environmental footprint and increase the range of functional groups possible. We aim to meet these short-term objectives through 3 high-impact PhD projects over the next 5 years: (1) Synthesize photo-sensitive compounds from CO and H2 to promote reaction initiation. Metal carbonyls are the first targets for this project, given that iron pentacarbonyl (Fe(CO)5) has already shown that it affects our reactions (impact: increase treatment speed and repeatability); (2) Photo-reduce CO2 with UVC light (potentially from mercury-free LED lamps) and affordable catalysts to generate CO or photo-sensitive compounds, thereby leveraging the surface engineering process to sequester and utilize carbon (impact: reduce footprint); (3) Graft functional sulfur- and nitrogen-containing compounds onto PICVD-treated surfaces to promote selective attachment of molecules (such as proteins) - this has never been accomplished through atmospheric photo-processing (impact: increase applications). Accomplishing these objectives will lead to major impact in the economy, specifically through effects in the manufacturing sector (where thin films and coatings are a multi-billion-dollar industry) and through training of highly qualified personnel (3 PhDs, 10 undergrads) with high-value skills transferrable to Canadian industry.