Towards Application specific tailoring of CarbOn nanoMAterials

Project Information

TACOMA

Grant agreement ID: 841621

DOI

10.3030/841621

Project closed

EC signature date 2 May 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 22 June 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 278 606,40

EU contribution

€ 278 606,40

Coordinated by

OULUN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TACOMA (Towards Application specific tailoring of CarbOn nanoMAterials)

Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2022-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The goal of this project is to connect materials (mainly carbon-based) physicochemical properties to their observed performance, solving the yet unknown "why do carbon-based materials work as sensor surfaces". There is an ongoing debate in the literature where the performance of carbon nanomaterials are suspected to be related to their (i) oxygen functional groups, (ii) metal residues from growth processes or (iii) combination of these two.

Carbon-based materials are cheap to manufacture and can be tailored for application specific purposes when their property-performance relation is known in enough detail. This is important for society as the need and desire for e.g. personalized medicine and point-of-care testing has increased and is further increasing. Furthermore, there is a demand to answer to the increase in the observed neurological disorders due to the population living longer and reaching an age where conditions such as Parkinson's are "normal". As many carbon-based materials are biocompatible, there is much hope and promise in these materials to provide answers and solutions to the mentioned problems. It is extremely important for the society as a whole to improve the quality of life of all patients with neurological disorders and provide solutions to the increased burden laid to the healthcare systems.

The overall objective is to provide enough evidence (data) to show that we understand the property-performance relation well enough to transfer most of the hands-on laboratory work to computer simulations. When enough data is provided, we can compute and simulate the materials which would be ideal for specific applications. Then we can confirm these simulations in the laboratory and save a tremendous amount of time instead of continuing the "de facto" approach today where laboratory trial-and-error tests are carried out.

This action provided detailed physical and chemical insights to many carbon based materials. Majority of the results of this action revolve around electrochemistry, namely mapping optimal materials for charge transport and storage. The scientific work executed during this action resulted in large amounts of data that continue to produce publications at least until the year 2024.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Despite this project starting at the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic we have been able to provide a significant amount of data about the physicochemical properties of different carbon-based nanomaterials and in-depth information of other materials. This has allowed us to conclude that the previously reported differences in the carbon-nanomaterials family are not as straightforward as they have been reported to be. The terminology used in carbon nanomaterials studies, such as carbon nanotube (CNT), is oversimplified. We can clearly show that many of the materials in our recent publications are similar enough to be considered carbon nanotubes, but are far from each other in their properties. On the other hand, there are strong similarities and trends observed in the carbon nanomaterials family. One prime example of this is the oxygen functional groups at the material's surface, which is seemingly dominated by carboxyl-like groups. We have not observed any other oxygen functionalization to take a dominant role in the large datasets studied, which indicates that at least without further surface modification of these materials, the carboxyl groups seem to be the most abundant. It is naturally possible that the set selected for this study (n=13) happened to have this property and all materials were alike in their oxygen functionalization.

During the action we have successfully collected large datasets of different carbon-nanomaterials and used Transition-Edge Sensor to study different contamination levels in large batches of these materials. The paper about property-performance relations of carbon nanomaterials is currently in manuscript form being prepared for publication. One key point of this paper is the fact, that there trace levels of metals present in nearly all the carbon nanomaterials, which likely plays a role in their chemistry. Thus, the surface chemistry (C, O and N at the surface) is not the only answer to their performance.

The project has resulted in nearly 20 peer reviewed journal publications, where several more will still be published. These results along with the fantastic opportunity to travel abroad and learn insights of different workplaces and cultures is being promoted by the ER by visiting local high schools and further by promoting education at the applied sciences universities. The unique insights as combination of pandemic and automation has been noted elsewhere and the ER has been invited to talk in a conference about the process and analysis related automation.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have used the Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) in studying carbon-based nanomaterials in an unique way, providing first in the world calibration study to connect the counts received at TES to the amount of material at the sample. This is important, as the current gold-standard for elemental amount studies is based on methods such as X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), which is known to have some downsides, especially in its sensitivity (ability to detect roughly down to 0.1 at % of high Z materials, whereas requiring up to % at levels to see low Z materials). With Soft X-Ray operated TES we are clearly able to provide sensitivities at least 10-fold better. Furthermore, as TES is bulk sensitive we are able to study these materials from deeper than with XPS while still being non-destructive to the materials (even radiation damage is negligible as the used X-Ray energies are very low). Publication about these calibration studies is currently being written and will have an important impact on academia and the industry as soon as these TES devices get more foothold on the broader market.

Further, beyond state of the art we have provided a wide understanding of the carbon nanomaterials surface chemistry which we published as a "Guide to the Perplexed", which aims to clearly explain carbon-based nanomaterials properties in easily approachable format, which for the first time offers reasonably easy and simple way for a researcher or industrial specialist to grab a single publication and use that as a good reference for many carbon-based nanomaterials that have been studied in same environment and that are comparable within the dataset. We believe that dissemination of such information is important for not only academia, but also to the industry making this publication to have both socio-economic impact along with societal implications.

There are multitude of other papers published as part of the action, where one key message is, that the synchrotron based radiation measurements offer necessary insight into the materials properties. The automation and the gradual simplification of the sample loading process along with the mechanized and automated sample processing has shown to quite easily increase the throughput of the measurement endstation 10-fold. This has further clearly allowed the systems users to input more samples and get more higher quality data, resulting in less guessing and more data-based decision making on the materials development and research process.

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