Upcoming Events

Conventional curing of thermally cured thermosets requires the bulk-scale heating and cooling of the polymer and any substrate.  While effective, the heating and cooling is rather slow and the spatial distribution of heat cannot be finely controlled.  Both of these present problems for advanced manufacturing of objects from thermally cured thermosets.  For instance, 3D printing of these thermosets at reasonable rates would require the ability to start and stop curing on the timescale of milliseconds.  Curing of coatings of these thermosets on temperature-sensitive substrates, such as electronics or skin, would require the ability to heat only the micron scale film, and not its substrate.

Recent work from my research group has demonstrated that photothermal heating by nanoparticles can exceed the above requirements---providing nanosecond and nanometer precision in the distribution of heat. At the same time, this highly localized heat remains effective at driving thermally activated reactions.  Indeed, through proper pairing of nanoparticles and light, we can achieve billion-fold rate enhancements of thermally activated chemical reactions---including the curing of thermally cured thermoset polymers. This talk will demonstrate this result and examine some of the kinetic and thermodynamic implications of this highly localized heat.