MRI: Acquisition of a Powder ALD/CVD Reactor for Next Generation Nanomanufacturing

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award supports the acquisition of a fluidized bed vapor deposition reactor capable of applying precise nanoscale coatings to a range of materials. Such coatings can improve the processing and performance of materials in technology sectors as diverse as electronics (enabling smart dust for environmental monitoring), renewable energy and chemical processing (greatly reducing carbon emissions), additive manufacturing (improving medical implants or aerospace components), and pharmaceuticals (increasing the effectiveness of drug delivery).

The instrument will allow researchers to study the details of fluidized bed processing and understand how it can be applied to new applications. The reactor will be installed within the shared-user facility at Georgia Tech’s Institute for Electronic and Nanotechnology, a node of the NSF-funded National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, ensuring accessibility to users at Georgia Tech, the southeast region, and the country.

Multiple educational activities, including the integration of course content on powder processing into the existing curriculum as well as the creation self-guided primer videos, will increase awareness of and access to the tool.

While vapor deposition methods are ubiquitous in microelectronics, they are rarely used in other high-volume manufacturing situations. However, the development of fluidized bed vapor deposition reactor technology is changing the status quo, now making it technically feasible and economically viable to apply such nanomaterial coatings to previous off-limits materials (e.g., powders, fibers).

The unique capabilities of this reactor will permit fundamental investigations of the (i) heat and mass transfer during the bottom-up manufacturing of electronic devices in microcapsule powders, (ii) impact of length scale and order/disorder in the optical phenomena of dispersions of complex colloidal particles, (iii) rheology of advanced feedstock for additive manufacturing and how reactants and inoculants can be used to create new materials with superior properties, (iv) interplay between weight, strength, and interfacial functionalization in on-demand recyclable carbon fiber composites, and (v) mechanisms governing mechanocatalyst operation to enable new all-electric paradigms in industrial processing. For these and related use-cases, powder agitation – via fluidization – is essential to ensure uniform deposition.

Small volumes enable work with scarce samples or prototype materials. Large volumes provide the quantity of material needed to fabricate and study macroscopic objects/devices/parts and to explore manufacturing scale-up.

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.