{"id":9953,"date":"2015-05-23T08:51:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T15:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/?p=9953"},"modified":"2015-05-23T09:00:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T16:00:37","slug":"9953","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/9953\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0\u201cJunkyard Wars\u201d Rig Sprays Quantum Dots Precisely"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reported widely late last year as a \u201cJunkyard Wars\u201d contraption, University of Toronto researcher Illan Kramer\u2019s spray rig<\/a> for coating just about anything with a thin film of colloidal quantum dots (QCDs) offers the potential for making Kramer\u2019s hopes come true.\u00a0 \u201cMy dream is that one day you\u2019ll have two technicians with Ghostbusters backpacks come to your house and spray your roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Junkyard<\/a>

Junkyard Wars look belies use of supercomputer, finished product one-atom thick<\/p><\/div>\n

Kramer is a post-doctoral fellow with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and IBM Canada\u2019s Research and Development Centre.\u00a0 His spray equipment, composed of a \u201cspray nozzle used in steel mills to cool steel with a fine mist of water, and a few regular air brushes from an art store,\u201d manages to spread colloidal quantum dots with the precision usually found in atomic layer deposition managed in laboratory or carefully-controlled manufacturing conditions.<\/p>\n

He admits to the unaesthetic look of the setup, but notes that the $1,000 sprayLD system (a play on the manufacturing process called ALD, or atomic layer deposition), can take the place of expensive batch manufacturing processes normally used to coat materials.<\/p>\n

His sprayLD \u201d blasts a liquid containing CQDs directly onto flexible surfaces, such as film or plastic, like printing a newspaper by applying ink onto a roll of paper. \u201c\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The solar-collecting QCDs \u201ccould be used to coat all kinds of weirdly shaped surfaces, from patio furniture to an airplane\u2019s wing. A surface the size of your car\u2019s roof wrapped with CQD-coated film would produce enough energy to power three 100-Watt light bulbs\u2014or 24 compact fluorescents.\u201d\u00a0 The implications for an airplane, with its large wetted area covered with the film include range extension for an electrically-powered aircraft, or all-day soaring for a motorglider.<\/p>\n