Chemistry research centre to build on strengths in organic materials

Chemistry research centre to build on strengths in organic materials

Three researchers will head up a new Functional Organic Materials Research Centre with grants totaling $700,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation(CFI), the Ontario Research Fund and contributions from industry partners.

The centre will allow chemistry and biochemistry professors Tricia Carmichael, John Trant, and Simon Rondeau-Gagné to expand on their current research into designing and synthesizing new organic materials to create wearable electronics, stretchable transistors, and highly specified drug delivery methods.

“This supports the infrastructure we already have in place, and provides new and essential instrumentation that will bolster our ability to do leading edge research,” says Dr. Trant.

Dr. Carmichael is a leader in stretchable electronic devices. This centre will give her new tools to characterize electrically functional materials and devices for stretchable and wearable electronics applications, and she says this new infrastructure will create a world-class interdisciplinary facility.

“The research we can now pursue will lead to new innovative materials for use in the rapidly growing wearable electronics market, ‘smart’ drug-delivery technologies and biomedical devices, as well as new self-healing materials,” says Carmichael.

Synthetic chemist Trant investigates triggerable drug delivery devices to help fight cancer and certain autoimmune diseases. He says this infrastructure is necessary to move forward on this research, which includes designing chemotherapy drug delivery methods that would target cancer cells and avoid healthy cells.

“I will get a custom-built peptide synthesizer — which is essentially a robot that makes peptides,” says Trant. “This made-to-order robot will be designed specifically to work with unnatural, high-value amino acids and allow ready recovery of them and will be the first of its type in the world.”

Dr. Rondeau-Gagne’s lab uses materials to build new types of transistors needed for innovative bio-electronics. He requires specialized tools to measure difficult-to-define polymers.

“We are designing the centre to be able to create new biomaterials and polymers to go from design, to preparation at large scale, and get to the final application in electronics,” says Rondeau-Gagné.

“The centre is the connection between all our capabilities and this is about delivering innovative, final applications with state-of-the-art materials. It is why we call it functional materials, because it won’t give us just the capabilities of working with our research program, but also to expand and really get that materials expertise.”

Dean of science Chris Houser says with recent strategic research hires, the University of Windsor has attained a critical mass of researchers focusing on organic materials, which makes it one of the strongest departments in Canada in this field. Together with this new research centre, they can start training the next generation of materials scientists.

“This builds momentum with research, but with Science UWindsor’s commitment to undergraduate training, we are also going to have undergrads working with this state-of-the-art equipment so that when they graduate, they will have worked with the absolute top line in equipment and materials science methods,” says Dr. Houser.

“This also makes us highly competitive, with researchers around the province, the country, and even from Michigan, wanting to come and use this equipment.”

The centre will be housed in the Faculty of Science’s new research facility and will be divided into two major biomaterials and bioelectronics platforms, and includes advanced instrumentation such as a custom-built peptide synthesizer, an ultra-high-temperature gel permeation chromatography system, and a cutting-edge transistor fabrication station.

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Sara Elliott

For the original story, please visit:

http://www.uwindsor.ca/dailynews/2018-06-27/chemistry-research-centre-build-strengths-organic-materials

University of Windsor professors exploring new frontier of stretchable electronics

University of Windsor professors exploring new frontier of stretchable electronics

(From the Windsor Star, Sat. Mar. 18, 2017 Edition)

In the thin layers of the polymers oozing out of a machine that looks an expensive version of an ink jet printer lays the next frontier of electronics.

The research being done into new synthetic polymers in Simon Rondeau-Gagne’s University of Windsor lab is the first step in creating wearable electronics.

“Probably in the next decade every object is going to be connected through the Internet,” said Rondeau-Gagne, who accepted an assistant chemistry professor’s position at Windsor last July after completing his post-doctoral work at Stanford University.

“There’s a want for smart electronics. Stretchable electronics will be an important piece of the Internet of things.

“Once we have a material that is stretchable, robust enough to take repeated use and can self-repair, the potential is whatever industry’s designers can imagine.”

Rondeau-Gagne is combining his expertise in designing synthetic materials with Professor Tricia Carmichael, who has already built an international reputation for her work in the stretchable electronics field.

Carmichael, a researcher at IBM’s headquarters in Armonk, New York before returning to her hometown in 2005, said the two research teams offer complimentary skill sets.

“My team’s strength is we’re good at building things and working with different materials and integrating them into stretchable electronics that are stable and maintain their functionality,” Carmichael said.

“Simon is an expert in synthetizing different materials and designing them for different functions.

“Together we can do stuff that no one has ever done before.”

Beyond smart clothing that could monitor in real time the body’s condition, Rondeau-Gagne envisions such possibilities as stretchable electronics helping restore the electrical impulse connections in a damaged spinal cord or new materials in car doors that self-repair after being dented.

“I think one of the emerging uses will be in elder care,” Carmichael said.

“It allows for constant monitoring of pulse, blood pressure, sweat or where they are,” said Carmichael, who oversees a team of nine student researchers.

“However, there are still huge challenges to doing all these things.”

The first step is for Rondeau-Gagne to find the right material.

Rondeau-Gagne said what his research team of six students is doing is akin to building a foundation for stretchable electronics.

“It’s like sci-fi stuff,” said Rondeau-Gagne, a native of Chicoutimi-Saguenay.

“The material I’m working with looks like ink, but when it’s solid it looks like blue plastic.

“It makes a film, but it’s only 40 Nano-millimeters thick.”
Rondeau-Gagne already has been successful in creating a polymer containing transistors that could be ‘re-healed’ with heat.

He hopes to soon finish developing self-healing materials that don’t require an outside stimulus to allow Carmichael to use her expertise in stretchable electronics.

“I believe within a year we’ll reach that point,” Rondeau-Gagne said.

“Tricia has a real expertise in these electronic devices and stretchable materials. She’s had great results already using rubber materials.”

Indeed Carmichael’s team has already created a new type of rubber. It’s clear and impermeable to gases and was modification of the rubber used for the inner tubing in car tires.

“What we were able to do is develop a transparent version of this material,” Carmichael said. “That means we make displays to use in it.”

However, the ultimate goal is to find a synthetic compound that is more stretchable, can take repeated use, self-repairs and can handle the heat produced by the transistors and circuitry embedded in it.

“We already have materials that can be stretched 100 per cent,” Rondeau-Gagne said.

“However, even if it can stretch 10,000 per cent, if it can’t be stretched more than a couple times without the circuit breaking, we can’t use it. There’s going to be pressure and stretching all the time with wearable electronics.”

Carmichael said the field of stretchable electronics is developing rapidly with the growing investment from major corporations and foundations.

“Simple demos (of stretchable electronics) are real,” Carmichael said.

“There’s a huge community who make wearable electronics by sewing things into their clothes. There’s already a cottage industry.

“I visited a wearable electronics company in Toronto making real products – sweat sensors for clothing. It’s coming.”

Windsor Research Spotlight - Stretching the Limit

NSERC Research Spotlight - Stretching the Limit

A research team at the University of Windsor has found that working with a problem, instead of against it, can result in incredible breakthroughs. Chemistry professor Tricia Carmichael and co-investigator Heather Filiatrault have successfully created stretchable electronics able to continue conducting electricity even after stretching to the point of cracking.

Stretchable light-emitting devices are the building blocks of foldable and expandable display screens and electronics-integrated clothing, as well as other soft devices designed to go inside a body, like a stretchable balloon catheter that can mend damaged areas of the heart.

“The dilemma with the design of these devices is that when we use electrically conductive materials, like aluminum or copper, these materials will crack when stretched even a minimal amount,” says Dr. Carmichael.

Stretchable electronics integrate a thin film of electrically conductive material with a film of rubber, but the conductive materials crack when they are stretched, which breaks the circuit and renders the device useless.

Carmichael and her lab team investigated the theory that when a rough surface is stretched it generates multiple micro-cracks, instead of a few large debilitating cracks. To manipulate the cracking, she simply added a layer of inexpensive white glue before the thin sheet of metal was attached.

“Instead of eliminating cracks, we encouraged a lot of cracking, like a spider web of cracks that don’t form a continuous pathway through the sheet,” says Carmichael. “The cracks purposefully interfere with each other, relieving the strain, so the current can flow along a jagged but continuous pathway.”

The glue layer is watered down to control the film thickness. It is spread over the rubber layer and creates the required roughness by forming blobs. Members of Carmichael’s lab built a strain sensor out of rubber, glue and gold and wrapped it around a thumb. The sensor successfully monitored when the digit was extended, and when it was not.

Carmichael says this is a low-cost, green solution, which uses simple components that could potentially scale up to larger surface devices.

“We made the system more defective in order to make it work better,” she says. “I love this concept of embracing the natural tendency of cracking, and then pushing it further.”


This research is published as the cover story in the September 30th edition of  ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 

To see the original story on the NSERC web site, click here.