AVS 61st International Symposium & Exhibition
    Manufacturing Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session MS+PS+TF-ThA

Invited Paper MS+PS+TF-ThA1
Vapor-Phase Infiltration of Cellulose and Cotton

Thursday, November 13, 2014, 2:20 pm, Room 302

Session: Functionalization  of Paper and Textiles & Their Applications
Presenter: Mato Knez, CIC nanoGUNE, Spain
Authors: M. Knez, CIC nanoGUNE, Spain
K. Gregorczyk, CIC nanoGUNE, Spain
M. Garcia, CIC nanoGUNE, Spain
I. Azpitarte, CIC nanoGUNE, Spain
D. Pickup, Centro de Física de Materiales (CSIC-UPV-EHU), Spain
C. Rogero, Centro de Física de Materiales (CSIC-UPV-EHU), Spain
Correspondent: Click to Email
There is a significant interest in using inexpensive biological materials as substrates and scaffolds for emerging applications due to their natural occurrence. Of particular importance is the use of paper based materials and substrates for potential applications in energy storage, catalysis, solar cells, etc. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has been proven to be the technique of choice to modify paper and other cellulose based materials due to its low reaction temperatures, extreme thickness control, and conformality. Furthermore, vapor phase infiltration techniques, which are a recent modification to ALD, have allowed infiltration of metal-organic precursors into a variety of organic materials including spider silk, porphyrins, and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), leading to a more detailed understanding of the reaction between these organic substrates and the metal-organic precursors, as-well-as surprising changes in bulk properties. Understanding the chemical interactions between precursors and substrates are crucial in order to approach applications. We modified cellulose and cotton with common ALD precursors and monitored the chemical changes after the reaction a semi-in-situ XPS experiments. Our findings show that the precursors induce small, but important changes to the biopolymer upon chemical interaction and that the precursors indeed react different to each other. The experiments also compare well to the final results of standard ex-situ XPS. Changes in the bulk mechanical properties of the substrates were studied through use of tensile testing. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS), Young’s modulus (YM), and toughness are shown to be a non-linear function of both the precursor used and the number exposure cycles.