WP3
Safe by material design: surface engineering
Objective
This package aims to develop and validate solutions to reduce toxicity, ecotoxicity and release potential “dustiness” of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) and/or nano-enabled products (NEPs) at source by means of industrial performance-oriented surface engineering approaches, including surface coating, functionalization, agglomeration and /or doping, among others.
Activities
Work Package three will work on the design, development, testing and validation of surface engineering approaches to decrease toxicity and release/emission potential of ENMs within real processing lines while considering product performance criteria and economic viability. The tasks to be conducted include the identification and design of surface modification strategies based on the physicochemical properties of ENMs and related function in NEPs, the validation of the surface engineering approaches, including ENMs doping, coating, functionalization, and agglomeration for toxicity reduction, and exposure/release mitigation and control, the cost analysis for direct implementation and scaling up in production lines by industrial actors in the nanotechnology supply chain, and the definition of grouping criteria for surface engineering application.
Key Outcome
A library of well-balanced surface engineering approaches to design out hazard and exposure and validated in case studies on structural or functional materials, coatings and cosmetics.