Collaborative Research: Understanding Material Transfer Mechanisms in Corona-Enabled Contactless Electrostatic Printing of Binder-free Nano-/micro-Structures

合作研究：了解无粘合剂纳米/微米结构的电晕非接触式静电印刷中的材料转移机制

• 批准号: 2114223
• 负责人: Long Wang
• 金额: $ 15.63万
• 依托单位: California Polytechnic State University Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2114223&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Understanding; Material; Transfer

Printed electronics have a potential to transform the public health, the national security, and society as a whole. Manufacturing innovations are essential to enable cost-effective and scalable production, enhance the performance of printed electronics, and realize their broad applications. Current printing techniques, however, still face long-lasting challenges in addressing the tradeoff between the printing speed versus the print resolution and performance. This award supports fundamental research to advance a novel corona-enabled contactless electrostatic printing (CEP) technique that utilizes the ultra-fast electrostatic attraction phenomenon to achieve the material transfer and manufacturing of binder-free nano-/micro-structures at a large scale. The contactless force control and binder-free nature lead to reduced manufacturing times and temperatures, with broader material options, and an ability to manipulate and assemble nano-/micro-structures, and improved device performance. The roll-to-roll compatibility of the CEP process may also facilitate a pathway for transition from fundamental research to commercial marketplaces, potentially beneficial to large-area and high-performance electronics and versatile applications of flexible functional systems. Through a close collaboration between an R1 university and a minority-serving institution, with additionally an industrial partner, this project also provides hands-on research opportunities and industrial experiences to minority undergraduate students and hosts “Future Electronics” community engagement workshops to local high schools, intended to inspire more students and engineers to participate in, benefit from, and contribute to the blooming U.S. electronics industry.To advance the CEP process, the project will focus on three basic research thrusts by a combination of numerical and experimental approaches. First, through mapping the distribution of charges and computing the distribution of the electric field, the formation and dynamic evolution mechanisms of the electric field will be revealed, which is essential to achieve precision controls. Then, the material transfer mechanism during the CEP process will be studied by investigating the impacts of the material conductivity, geometry and density. The project will also explore methodologies to manufacture aligned nano-/micro-structures by combining an electric field with a mechanical field. Further, the responsive mechanisms of the printed structures to external stimuli will be studied by monitoring the microstructure evolution and electrical performance simultaneously, together with the effects on the performance of the binder-free CEP electronics. Overall, the fundamental understanding of the CEP process is expected to substantially enhance the capability to precisely control an electric field to realize ultra-fast material manipulations, nano-/micro-structure constructions, and high-end electronics manufacturing.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.

印刷的电子产品有可能改变公共卫生，国家安全和整个社会。制造创新对于实现具有成本效益和可扩展性的生产，增强印刷电子产品的性能并实现其广泛应用至关重要。但是，当前的印刷技术在解决印刷速度与打印分辨率和性能之间的权衡方面仍然面临着持久的挑战。该奖项支持基础研究，以推动具有新型的无接触式静电印刷（CEP）技术，该技术利用超快速的静电吸引现象来实现大规模的无粘合剂纳米/微型结构的材料转移和制造。非接触力控制和无粘合剂的性质导致制造时间和温度降低，具有更广泛的材料选择，并且能够操纵和组装纳米/微观结构，并提高了设备​​性能。 CEP流程的卷到卷兼容性也可能支持从基本研究到商业市场过渡的途径，这可能对大面积和高性能电子设备以及灵活功能系统的多功能应用有益。通过R1大学与少数族裔服务机构之间的密切合作，此外，该项目还为少数群体本科生和主持“未来的电子产品”社区参与研讨会提供了动手的研究机会和工业经验通过数值和实验方法的结合来推力。首先，通过映射电荷的分布并计算电场的分布，将揭示电场的形成和动态演化机制，这对于实现精确控制至关重要。然后，通过研究材料电导率，几何形状和密度的影响来研究CEP过程中的材料转移机制。该项目还将探索通过将电场与机械场相结合的方法来制造对齐的纳米/微结构的方法。此外，将通过同时监视微观结构演化和电性能以及对无粘合剂CEP电子功能的影响来研究印刷结构对外部刺激的响应机制。总体而言，对CEP过程的基本理解有望实质上增强了精确控制电场以实现超快速的物质操作，纳米/微观结构结构和高端电子制造的能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，反映了通过使用基金会的智力效果评估来评估支持的珍贵，并以智力为基础的宽广和宽阔的影响。