Description:
Princeton Docket # 16-3236-1
Researchers in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University have developed a process for enhancing the properties of films made from particle suspensions such as colloids. Films and coatings produced using this method benefit from reduced delamination and deformation.
Coatings and films are widely used across multiple industries and products, including paints, electronics, printing inks, and batteries. Such materials are generally produced through the controlled drying of a colloidal suspension of particles. The mechanical properties of the resultant coating are of great importance for ensuring long term integrity and usability, and imperfections in the drying process or slurry composition can lead to undesirable outcomes. For instance, films may undergo delamination from the underlying substrate, or they may crack during the drying process, thus rendering the product unusable. This invention developed at Princeton offers a simple method of reducing the tensile stress during the film drying process. The process requires no change in the chemical composition of the materials being coated, thus eliminating the need to use foreign materials or additives. This method results in decreased rates of adverse processes such as cracking and delamination. Additionally, the technique has the benefit of reducing substrate deformation when applying a coating to soft materials such as elastomers or gels.
Applications
• Printing (including on soft substrates)
• Battery manufacturing
• Paints (including spray paint)
• Plasters
• Optical coatings
• Electronics
• Wearable devices
Advantages
• Reduced tensile stress during film drying
• Decreased rate of cracking, delamination, and substrate deformation
• No changes in chemistry required
Publications
F. Boulogne; Y.-L. Kong; J. K. Nunes; H. A. Stone. Effect of the Polydispersity of a Colloidal Drop on Drying Induced Stress as Measured by the Buckling of a Floating Sheet. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2016, 116, 238001.
Inventors
Howard Stone is the Donald R. Dixon '69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. His research has been concerned with a variety of fundamental problems in fluid motions dominated by viscosity, so-called low Reynolds number flows, and has frequently featured a combination of theory, computer simulation and modeling, and experiments to provide a quantitative understanding of the flow phenomenon under investigation. Prof. Stone is the recipient of the most prestigious fluid mechanics prize, the Batchelor Prize 2008, for the best research in fluid mechanics in the last ten years. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.
Janine Nunes is an Associate Research Scholar in Professor Howard A. Stone's research group in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. She earned her PhD in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the area of polymer particle synthesis and lithography. Her current research interests are in the use of multiphase microfluidics to template precursor liquid phases for the controlled fabrication of novel micro-objects, such as microfibers and core-shell/hollow microspheres.
François Boulogne, Ph.D, received his undergraduate and master's degrees in Physics from Université Paris-Saclay (France). He graduated in 2013 with a Ph.D. in Physics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris (France). In 2013, he joined the Complex Fluid group of Prof. Howard Stone at Princeton University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. François obtained in June 2014 an individual Marie Curie Fellowship to pursue his research in Princeton and in the group of Prof. Laurent Limat at Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes in Université Paris-Diderot. Now, he is a CNRS research assistant at Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay (France). His research is located at the interface between hydrodynamics with flow of complex fluids such as foams or polymer solutions, physical-chemistry of colloidal suspensions as well as continuum mechanics of consolidating materials.
Intellectual Property & Development status
Patent protection is pending.
Princeton is currently seeking commercial partners for the further development and commercialization of this opportunity.
Contact
Michael R. Tyerech
Princeton University Office of Technology Licensing • (609) 258-6762• tyerech@princeton.edu