Photochemically Induced, Polymer-Assisted Deposition for 3D Printing of Micrometer-Wide and Nanometer-Thin Silver Structures

用于微米宽和纳米薄银结构 3D 打印的光化学诱导聚合物辅助沉积

• 批准号: 1947753
• 负责人: Chao Wang
• 金额: $ 48.55万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1947753&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Photochemically; Induced; Polymer; Assisted; Deposition

This award supports research that will contribute new knowledge related to additive manufacturing (AM) of metallic (silver) structures, promoting both the progress of new manufacturing technologies and advancing a broad range of scientific applications. AM is the process of making a three-dimensional object of virtually any shape from a digital computer model. The technique, often called 3D printing, has the potential to revolutionize the way things are made. Currently, there are many additive manufacturing processes to make metal parts. However, almost all additive manufacturing processes currently available require high-temperature processes, which can often cause damage to the products to be printed and deteriorate the product performance. Additionally, many of these processes are limited to macroscale components, with dimensions at the millimeter scale or above, due to size limitations for metal powder. This award supports fundamental research to help develop a room-temperature AM process that enables high-resolution printing without thermal damage. The new process will utilize solution-based layer-by-layer deposition to produce highly reflective and highly conductive metal microstructures directly from soluble metal salts. The metallic microstructures produced by this process have wide applications in semiconductor electronics, energy, healthcare, biomedical, aerospace, soft robotics, and automotive industries. Therefore, results from this research will benefit the U.S. economy and society. This research involves several disciplines including manufacturing, photochemistry, photonics, and materials science. The multi-disciplinary approach will help broaden participation of underrepresented groups in research and positively impact engineering education.Prevalent AM metal manufacturing mainly relies on thermal or laser assisted metal fusion or ink-jet printing of metal powders and nanoparticles, and has serious limitations, including large feature sizes, rough surfaces, high optical/electrical loss, and incompatibility with soft materials. This research will fill this knowledge gap by exploring a new solution-based photochemically-induced polymer-assisted deposition process to allow scalable production of metal microstructures. The research team will introduce a three-dimensional molecular precursor, consisting of an interlaid network of polymers, metal salt, and reductants, that can turn into continuous metal films and structures upon ultraviolet illumination. The research team will build a model to study the fundamental chemical and physical aspects of the growth mechanism, design a series of experiments to verify the model, explore the fundamental limits of the critical dimensions of the printed structures, combine theoretical and experimental studies, and characterize the structural, optical, and electrical performance of the printed films. Further, we will apply this technique to a variety of substrate materials, including non-flat surfaces, to construct three-dimensional structures.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.

该奖项支持将有助于与金属（银）结构添加剂制造（AM）相关的新知识的研究，从而促进了新的制造技术的进步并推进了广泛的科学应用。 AM是从数字计算机模型中制作几乎任何形状的三维对象的过程。该技术通常称为3D打印，有可能彻底改变事物的制作方式。当前，有许多增材制造工艺可以制造金属零件。但是，当前几乎所有可用的添加剂制造过程都需要高温过程，这通常会损害印刷产品并使产品性能恶化。此外，由于金属粉末的尺寸限制，这些过程中的许多过程都限于宏观分量，其尺寸为毫米或更高。该奖项支持基本研究，以帮助开发室温AM流程，该过程可实现高分辨率打印而不会受到热损坏。新工艺将利用基于溶液的逐层沉积，直接从可溶性金属盐中直接产生高度反射性和高度导电的金属微结构。该过程产生的金属微观结构在半导体电子，能源，医疗保健，生物医学，航空航天，软机器人和汽车行业中具有广泛的应用。因此，这项研究的结果将使美国经济和社会受益。这项研究涉及几个学科，包括制造，光化学，光子学和材料科学。多学科的方法将有助于扩大代表性不足的群体在研究和积极影响工程教育中的参与。价值的AM金属制造主要依赖于热或激光辅助金属融合或金属粉末和纳米颗粒的墨水喷射印刷，并具有严重的限制，并具有较大的特征，包括大量的材料，柔软的材料，柔和的材料。这项研究将通过探索新的基于溶液的光化学诱导的聚合物辅助沉积过程来填补这一知识空白，从而允许可扩展的金属微观结构产生。研究团队将引入三维分子前体，由聚合物，金属盐和还原剂组成，可以在紫外线照明时变成连续的金属膜和结构。研究团队将建立一个模型来研究增长机制的基本化学和物理方面，设计一系列实验，以验证模型，探索印刷结构的临界维度的基本限制，结合理论和实验研究，并表征印刷电影的结构，光学和电性能。此外，我们将将这项技术应用于包括非平板表面在内的各种底物材料上，以构建三维结构。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评估来审查标准的评估值得的支持。