SBIR-STTR Award

A wide range of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) represent a significant threat to life due to their high level of toxicity. Current military chemical-biological (CB) suits use activated carbon as the adsorbent. This layer, while a good adsorbent, does not reactively destroy the CWA. For improved performance, there is a desire to integrate a reactive component to actively decompose CWAs. Metal-organic framework (MOF) materials have shown promise for detoxification. However, incorporation of the MOFs represents a significant challenge due their small particle size and tendency to be deactivated when fabricated into large active beads. Mainstream proposes to use a highly scalable, tunable polymer processing approach to fabricate highly reproducible MOF-polymer beads that can easily be incorporated into standard PPE. In Phase I, Mainstream will demonstrate the ability to control the bead size and solids loading, activity of beads of various sizes, and scalability of the process. The Phase I will culminate in a design of the scalable, continuous production process for the MOF-polymer beads to be built in Phase II. This will ultimately result in the delivery of unpackaged and packaged beads for testing in a relevant operational environment (TRL 6) in Phase II.

Chemical warfare agents (CWAs) continue to represent a significant threat with their high toxicity levels. Current protective layers provide a good adsorbent, but not a reactive layer and are thus not an efficient detoxifier for CWAs. Metal-organic framework (MOF) materials show great promise to integrate a reactive component to actively decompose, or detoxify but they are difficult to integrate due to the small particle size. In Phase I, we developed a scalable method for the fabrication of a wide range of spherical MOF beads within highly porous polymer matrix. Furthermore, this technique was applied to a range of polymers and MOFs, allowing precise tuning of the properties. We demonstrated the process for a range of MOFs and polymers. In all cases the beads retained 95% to 99% of the MOF’s available surface area, had excellent mechanical stability, and did not dust. In Phase II, we will further optimize the process expanding the MOFs and the polymers to optimize the performance as well as methods of integrating the beads into protective equipment. Phase II will ultimately result in the delivery of 1 kg of validated unpackaged and packaged beads for testing in a relevant operational environment (TRL 6)