Engineering news
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and industry partners are making a multi-million investment in materials research projects.
The EPSRC will contribute £10.3 million and the industry will provide £2.8 million to fund four research projects - lead by UCL, Bristol, Surrey and York universities - to find safer, more sustainable alternatives to rare, expensive, and difficult to source raw materials used by manufacturing industries.
The research teams will assess the viability of using different, replacement materials in the manufacturing supply chain and consider their properties, cost, performance, and scalability. They will also investigate how production processes or technology will need to adapt to using these newer materials.
The expectation is that the work produced by the studies will enable manufacturers across the energy, automotive, aerospace, and construction sectors, to adopt new advanced material alternatives.
Universities and science minister, David Willetts, said: “As one of the eight great technologies of the future, advanced materials will ensure safer and more sustainable development of resources to boost the capability of UK manufacturing. This investment in research will help keep the UK ahead in the global race for exciting manufacturing innovations.”
Chief executive of EPSRC, David Delpy, said: “Through the development and deployment of improved materials, processes and products that will come from this research, UK industries will be able to create wealth and new jobs, whilst at the same time tackling the societal and environmental challenges that resulted from the use of the original materials which were often rare and difficult to refine.”
The four projects
UCL will lead a project which examines alternatives for transparent conducting oxide materials, used in window coatings, solar power panels, phones and computers, from nanoparticle dispersions, inks and thin films. Researchers will replace tin, which is expensive and indium, which is scarce, with common elements like titanium, aluminium and zinc.
University of Bristol will focus on developing new active materials for photovoltaic solar cells based on abundant and low cost elements. The research will aim to replace key elements such as gallium, indium, cadmium and tellurium, while implementing processes compatible with large-scale manufacturing.
University of Surrey will work on synthesising and processing alternative thermoelectric and piezoelectric materials used in functional devices including sensors, actuators and energy harvesters. Sensors and actuators are used in motion detectors, fuel injectors, engine sensors and medical diagnostic tools. The UK sensors market is worth an estimated £3 billion.
University of York will investigate waste biomass and waste CO2 to replace petrochemical feedstocks in the manufacture of polymers. For example, food waste or wood shavings could be turned into home insulation or into engineering materials for house construction. The research hopes to develop processes which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, at no extra cost to production.