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

I-Corps：用于红外热成像技术的硫族化物杂化无机/有机聚合物 (CHIP)

• 批准号: 2031833
• 负责人: Jeffrey Pyun
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 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: 2020-08-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2031833&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Chalcogenide; Hybrid; Inorganic; Organic

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.

该 I-Corps 项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发新型红外 (IR) 光学聚合物材料。红外热成像（即“夜视”）长期以来一直用于国防和军事。红外热成像在消费电子、交通、医疗成像、机器人和航空航天行业也具有巨大的潜力，阻碍红外热像仪在消费市场大规模应用的主要限制之一是这些成像系统的高成本。在当前的红外热成像系统中，透射光学元件（例如透镜、窗口）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，它们由廉价的原材料组成，可以很容易地熔化或溶液加工成窗口或透镜。成功地将这些材料用作廉价的红外塑料可以创造出更便宜的红外相机，并有可能进入这些红外成像系统。该 I-Corps 项目基于硫属化物混合无机/有机聚合物 (CHIP) 的开发，这是一种新型合成聚合物，具有增强的光学性能，适用于红外应用。迄今为止任何合成聚合物中折射率最高，并且由于硫-硫 (S-S) 含量非常高，因此与传统合成聚合物相比具有优异的红外透明度，或者共聚物主链中的硫-硒（Se-S）键可以被熔化或溶液加工成光学元件，例如透镜或窗口，这些光学元件直接适用于红外热成像。开发改进的合成方法以大规模合成这些材料，并开发新的增材制造加工方法来制造窗口、透镜和光学元件。此外，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。开发这些新型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智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。