SBIR Phase I: Bright and Lightfast Fluorescent Pigments for Paints, Polymers and Inks

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the creation of new fluorescent materials that will provide new color technologies to the paint, polymer, and ink industries. These new materials will overcome the undesirable properties of commercial fluorescent pigments, like a tendency to rapidly fade, give weak color strength, and degrade during processing. Besides giving fabrics, packaging, and toys bright, attractive colors, improvements to fluorescent pigments could change several parts of daily life: Brighter paints and signs could improve road and airport safety. Product designers for next-generation consumer electronics will have a new color palette for their newest gadget. Agricultural scientists would have a new tool to study crop treatments. As a result, success in this research project has the potential to claim a share of the multi-billion dollar colorant market, disrupt expectations around fluorescent pigments, bring new products to consumers, and create high-tech jobs. In addition, this project leverages collaboration with academic partners, supporting science and entrepreneurship education of university students and postdoctoral fellows. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project provides a revolutionary solution to a problem that has haunted chemistry for more than 150 years. Existing fluorescent materials are formulated with pigments that have thinly dispersed colorants, which dilutes their color and makes them susceptible to degradation. This is done by necessity, because fluorescent dyes have a tendency to aggregate, causing unwanted color changes and loss of the fluorescence effect. This solution utilizes a bottom-up "self-assembly" strategy to eliminate aggregation and create stable fluorescent solids that maximize the longevity and boldness of the color. This research will study this novel class of fluorescent pigment to gauge its resistance to fading, improved chromaticity, and material performance in realistic conditions. This will be done by measuring changes to fluorescence intensity and color appearance under natural and laboratory-accelerated weathering conditions, and creating test "products" in the form of paints and polymers. These test materials are expected to have stronger color for longer periods of time while still being amenable to commercial processing techniques. In addition, this project is an opportunity to study the behavior of self-assembling materials inside polymer formulations, which is a new research area with broad scientific and commercial potential. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.