MAnufacture of Safe and Sustainable Volatile Element functional materials - MASSIVE Materials

The world around us is full of modern technology designed to make our lives safer, more comfortable and more efficient. Such technology is made possible by materials and devices that are able to interact with their surrounding environment either by sensing or acting upon it. Examples of such devices include motion detectors, fuel injectors, engine sensors and medical diagnostic tools. These interactive devices contain functional materials that can pose health hazards, are obtained from parts of the world where supply cannot be guaranteed or are relatively scarce.

If access to these functional materials is restricted, many of these advances will no longer be available resulting in a reduction in living standards and decreased UK economic growth. There already exist a number of replacement materials that can provide the same functions without the same levels of concerns around safety, security of supply and sustainability. However, these replacement materials need to be manufactured using different processes compared to existing materials. This project explores new manufacturing technologies that could be used to create interactive devices that contains less harmful and sustainable materials with a secure supply.

This project will focus on two types of material - thermoelectric and piezoelectric - where the replacement materials share a set of common challenges: they need to be processed at elevated temperatures; they contain elements that evaporate at high temperatures (making high temperature processing and processing of small elements difficult); they are mechanically fragile making it difficult to shape the materials by cutting, grinding or polishing; they are chemically stable making it difficult to shape them by etching; and many are air and moisture sensitive.

The proposed research will address these challenges through three parallel research streams that proactively engage with industry. The first stream is composed of six manufacturing capability projects designed to develop the core manufacturing capabilities and know-how to support the programme. The second is a series of short term feasibility studies, conducted in collaboration with industry, to explore novel manufacturing concepts and evaluate their potential opportunities. Finally, the third stream will deliver focussed industrially orientated projects designed to develop specific manufacturing techniques for in an industrial manufacturing environment.

The six manufacturing capability projects will address:
1) The production of functional material powders, using wet and dry controlled atmosphere techniques, needed as feedstock in the manufacture of bulk and printed functional materials.
2) How to produce functional materials while maintaining the required chemistry and microstructure to ensure high performance. Spark Plasma Sintering will be used to directly heat the materials and accelerate fusion of the individual powder particles using an electric current.
3) Printing of functional material inks to build up active devices without the need to assemble individual components. Combing industrially relevant printing processes, such as screen printing, with controlled rapid temperature treatments will create novel print manufacturing techniques capable of handling the substitute materials.
4) How to join and coat these new functional materials so that they can be assembled into a device or protected from harsh environments when in use.
5) The fitness of substituted material to be compatible with existing shaping and treatment stages found later in the manufacturing chain.
6) The need to ensure that the substitute materials do not pose an equal or greater risk within the manufacturing and product life cycle environment. Here lessons learned from comparable material systems will be used to help predict potential risks and exposures.

The project will link together three academic institutions and a large number of industrial partners (at least 14 initially) representing all aspects of the supply chain involved in the development and exploitation of thermoelectric, piezoelectric and dielectric materials and associated technologies. The beneficiaries in the commercial sector will include materials manufacturers who will have new substituted materials and the producers of devices and systems, who will be able to exploit the new materials. Policy makers will benefit from the research by increased knowledge of the development of environmentally-friendly methods of producing substituted materials without the need for the use of toxic and increasingly rare elements. There will be opportunities for museums and science centres to highlight the move towards environmentally friendly processes and production routes for important functional materials employed in domestic and industrial environments.

To the wider public there will be environmental benefits of replacing a range of traditional functional materials (thermoelectric, piezoelectric and dielectric), containing rare or toxic elements, by new substituted materials in a wide variety of devices and systems in domestic and industrial settings. In the case of the new thermoelectric materials, devices and systems there will be the added environmental benefit of being able to increase the efficiency of the processes to extract energy from fossil fuels, leading to improved fuel consumption for automobiles and industrial plants, without needing to rely on the toxic elements in traditional thermoelectric materials. There will be environmental benefits from excluding toxic elements from the manufacturing process of important products and a slowing of the consumption of natural resources. This will yield economic benefit to individuals and the UK if expensive and rare elements can be substituted by cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives. The research has the potential to impact the wealth and the economic competitiveness of the UK by assisting in the manufacture of high performance materials which utilise cheaper and more readily available starting materials. For UK companies there will be new opportunities and new markets in the production of superior materials.

There exists potential for all companies in the supply chain to become more competitive. With the use of cheaper starting materials there should be direct economic and environmental benefits. With the energy materials there should be additional benefits in terms of power generation from waste heat and improved fuel consumption and the potential for reduction of imported oil to the UK, giving additional economic benefits. The new substituted materials and products based on them should be realised within 3-5 years, bringing benefits to companies in the supply chain within 3-7 years. Researchers working on the interdisciplinary projects will gain transferable skills in materials synthesis, characterisation, modelling, module and system engineering, thermal and electrical interfacing and the different applications areas. They will also become proficient in report writing and critical analysis that will be of value in future employment.

We will promote networking across the academic partners and industrial partner companies in the relevant supply chains. Regular contact will be maintained and news of developments will be circulated externally via electronic newsletters and the programme website. Networking events will be held to bring together academics and industrialists to review progress and identify new opportunities for materials substitution projects. Non-confidential findings will be published on a programme web page. Scientific and technological findings will be disseminated to the academic and industrial communities via presentations at major international and trade conferences and high impact refereed publications.