Bimetallic Complexes for Catalysis, Imaging and Information Processing

Polymers are long molecular chains. They are made by linking together lots of small molecules ("monomers"), like beads on a string. Polymers are very useful, due to the wide range of properties they can exhibit. As such, they are found everywhere in our daily lives: from plastic bags, food packaging, and mattresses, to our shampoos and dental fillings. One problem with our current methods of making polymers is that the monomers used in their production are almost exclusively derived from crude oil. This means that they have considerable carbon footprints, and with growing consciousness around climate change it is becoming increasingly important to make polymer production greener.
Chemists are investigating an alternative method for polymer production that involves replacing half of the oil-derived monomers in a polymer with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is attractive as a chemical building block because it is non-toxic, renewable, and, as a by-product of various industrial processes, inexpensive. This method reduces the carbon footprint of polymers in two ways. Firstly, since you since you use less oil-derived chemicals, less carbon dioxide is released into the environment while making the monomers. Secondly, the fact you are using carbon dioxide as a monomer saves one molecule of carbon dioxide per repeated unit in the polymer. Therefore, this method is an important step forward in making polymers greener.
While carbon dioxide makes an excellent chemical building block, it is very unreactive. This makes it difficult to incorporate into polymers. To counteract this, a "catalyst" is needed. A catalyst is a chemical that speeds up a chemical reaction without being used up in the process. An example is the catalytic converter in your car, which uses precious metals as catalysts to turn toxic, pollutant gases into more benign ones.
Since the late 1960s, chemists around the world have developed many catalysts for incorporating carbon dioxide into polymers. Further improvements largely centre around making catalysts that produce polymer more quickly. Other aims include making the catalysts more robust to increase their longevity, and lowering the high temperature and pressure requirements to lower their running costs and to allow retro-fitting of existing manufacturing plants. This requires a detailed understanding of how the catalysts work. This understanding can allow us to fine-tune catalyst designs to improve their performance.
Another, long-term aim for this project is to use catalysts which change colour upon reaction with carbon dioxide, allowing visual detection of the gas. Since our work involves catalysts which are highly reactive to trace quantities of carbon dioxide, this could allow for very sensitive detection. Carbon dioxide sensing has a variety of applications; including monitoring air quality, agricultural applications, and in medicine to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in a patient's breath.
This project falls within the EPSRC "manufacturing the future" research area.

The primary impact of the OxICFM CDT will be the highly-trained world-class scientists that it delivers. This impact will encompass both the short term (during their doctoral studies), the medium term (subsequent employment) and ultimately the longer timescale defined by their future careers and consequent impact on science, engineering and policy in the UK.

The impact of OxICFM students during their doctoral studies will be measured by the culture change in graduate training that the Centre brings about - in working at the interface between inorganic synthesis and manufacturing, and fostering cross-sector industry/academia working practices. By embedding not only from larger companies, but also SMEs, we have developed a training regime that has broader relevance across the sector, and the potential for building bridges by fostering new collaborations spanning enormous diversity in scientific focus and scale. Moreover, at a broader level, OxICFM offers to play a unique role as a major focus (and advocate) for manufacturing engagement with academic inorganic synthetic science in the UK.

From a scientific perspective, OxICFM will be uniquely able to offer a broad training programme incorporating innovative and challenging collaborative projects spanning all aspects of fundamental and applied inorganic synthesis, both molecular and materials based (40+ faculty). These will address key challenges in areas such as energy provision/storage, catalysis, and resource provision/renewal necessary to enhance the capability and durability of UK plc in the medium term. To give some idea of perspective, the output from previous CDTs in Oxford's MPLS Division include two start-up companies and in excess of 30 patents.

It is not only in the industrial and scientific realms that students will have impact during their timeframe of their doctorate. Part of the training programme will be in public engagement: team-based challenges in resource development/training and outreach exercises/implementation will form part of the annual summer school. These in turn will constitute a key part of the impact derived from the CDT by its engagement with the public - both face-to-face and through electronic/web-based media. As the centre matures, our aspiration is that our students - from diverse backgrounds - will act as ambassadors for the programme and promote even higher levels of inclusion from all parts of society.

For our partners, and businesses both large and small in the manufacturing sector, it will be our students who are considered the ultimate output of the OxICFM CDT. Our programme has been shaped by the need of such companies (frequently expressed in preliminary discussions) to recruit doctoral graduates who can apply themselves to a broad spectrum of multi-disciplinary challenges in manufacturing-related synthesis. OxICFM's cohort-based training programme integrates significant industry-led training components and has been designed to deliver a much broader skill set than standard PhD schemes. The current lack of CDT training at the interface of inorganic chemistry and manufacturing (and the relevance of inorganic molecules/materials to numerous industrial sectors) heightens the need for - and the potential impact of - the OxICFM CDT. Our students will represent a tangible and valuable asset to meet the long-term skills demand for scientists to develop new materials and nanotechnology identified in the UK Government's 2013 Foresight report.

In the longer term, the broad and relevant training delivered by OxICFM, and the uniquely wide perspective of the manufacturing sector it will deliver, will allow our graduates to obtain (and thrive in) positions of significant responsibility in industry and in research facilities/institutes. Ultimately we believe that many will go on to be future research leaders, driving innovation and changing research culture, and thereby making a lasting contribution to the UK economy.