Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Nanoparticles are revolutionizing many industries including medical diagnostics, environmental sensing, and greenhouse gas conversion. They are often made in laboratories via wet chemistry techniques which are complex, time consuming, and expensive. However, flame synthesis has proven to be one of the most scalable, and is typically used for the commercial production of nanoparticles: carbon black ($13B/year), fumed SiO2 ($3.5B/year), and pigmentary TiO2 ($21B/year). Carleton University is home to Ontario's only flame spray pyrolysis reactor, which is used to tailor-make nanoparticle systems that are of immediate industrial relevance. However, to find nanoparticle systems that have the desired properties, such as high surface area, one must also characterize many different systems, leading to a bottleneck. Further, Carleton's Faculty of Engineering and Design is in the process of establishing a chemical engineering department and a nanotechnology hub. The ability to design and synthesize new nanoparticles can only be taken advantage of if these materials can be characterized at the same pace at which they are synthesized. The requested instrument will analyze the size and surface area of nanoparticles and their pores. Such characterization is routinely done as the first step of any new nanoparticle system. Presently, there is a severe shortage of particle size and surface area characterization capacity. That shortage is leading to significant delays in data acquisition and quality. Further, such measurements are currently outsourced to different government laboratories, costing over $4,500 per month. Finally, all other similar instruments within Ottawa are operated by technicians for external requests rendering this characterization a virtual "black box" to students. The requested instrument will be used by the applicants primarily in two interlinked research themes: carbonaceous material and their impact on the climate crisis, and energy storage. It will also support four existing research programs as well as collaborations with industrial partners across the world: Monolith Materials (USA), Vale Inc, GH Power, Ekona Power, and ParteQ GmbH (Germany). All these partnerships are severely jeopardized by the extreme delays in the routine surface area characterization provided by the requested instrument. This, in turn, denies Canada from the economic opportunities made possible by successful collaboration with industrial partners. Further, the absence of an in-house analyzer denies HQP valuable training opportunities in conducting characterization techniques themselves, and, in-turn, compromises their prospects of gaining skills desirable by those industrial partners for future careers. The system will be maintained by dedicated personnel. The applicant team consists of early career and established researchers, and includes members of underrepresented and visible minority groups who currently lead more than 20 trainees from diverse backgrounds.