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Nanoparticle Thin-Film Coatings Exhibit Anti-Fogging, AntiReflective, and Self-Cleaning Properties The Pitch A water-based coating technology that can be used to create transparent conformal thin-film coatings of nanoparticles with nanometer-scale control over thickness and porosity has been developed by researchers in the Departments of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The coatings have a variety of technologically useful properties such as anti-fogging, anti-reflection, and selfcleaning, and are of interest to the military and automotive industries. In recent years, nanoparticles of various materials with a wide range of sizes (from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers) have become commercially available. The ability to controllably manipulate nanoparticles into functional thin-film coatings, however, has proven to be very challenging, particularly in the search for nanoscale control over the placement and arrangement of the nanoparticles. By controlling the packing of nanoparticles in a thin-film coating, for example, it should be possible to manipulate important parameters such as porosity, surface texture/ roughness, and mechanical durability. The Technology About 40 years ago, a research project demonstrated that oppositely charged “colloidal particles” could be assembled from aqueous solutions into uniform thin-film coatings through the use of a layer-by-layer sequential adsorption process. Building from this research, the MIT group has further refined the technique and established the processing framework needed to controllably manipulate a variety of nanoparticles into functional thin-film coatings. Key to the development of useful coatings was gaining a fundamental understanding of the role nanoparticle surface charge and size play in the layer-by-layer assembly process and identifying a means to render the resultant all-nanoparticle thin-film coatings mechanically robust. In the former case, it turns out that there exists a narrow solution pH-processing window for creating high-quality coatings with layer thicknesses comparable to the diameters of the nanoparticles, which may account for the reason that this approach has been neglected over the past 40 years.
Figure 1. Images of a water droplet instantaneously wetting (1500 W/mK) inserts into Cu- and Al-matrix composites for devices such as transmit and receive modules with extreme thermal load and cooling re quirements but that still rely on CTEmatching to the device package to reduce or eliminate thermal stresses during heating or cooling. ___________ Opportunities The company is seeking new applications, contacts to further expand the market for these materials, collaborations, and investment to expand their marketing and manufacturing facilities. Source: For information, contact James A. Cornie, Chief Technology Officer, MMCC, LLC, 101 Clematis Avenue, Waltham, MA 02453 USA; tel. 781-8934449, fax 781-893-7230, and e-mail [email protected].
MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 32 • APRIL 2007 •
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