Technologies for the Future

Internationally leading science requires experimental facilities with state-of-the-art equipment. Advanced materials are a key driver of technological innovation, with widespread benefits for both science and society. In this project, we aim to refresh four facilities with impact across Physics, Electronics, Chemistry and Biology in order to enhance our capability in this area, with maximum usage across the University of York and beyond. We will install new physical and chemical characterisation systems to support a range of challenging new applications, for example, state of the art thin film growth capabilities, and biologically-inspired sensor technologies. Using these new facilities, we will achieve four major milestones for next-generation materials development:

1. Refresh thin film growth capabilities in order to develop next generation materials.

2. Renew electron microscopy facilities to facilitate high spatial resolution mapping of next generation materials.

3. Extend and refresh a capability in molecular characterisation to underpin multidisciplinary activities spanning the physical and life sciences.

4. Refresh, complement and extend the capabilities of the York Centre of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry (CoEMS) by addition of a high-performance Orbitrap Fusion instrument.

Through this proposal we will invest in state-of-the-art equipment that will enable us to create, analyse and understand new materials and use them to develop innovative interdisciplinary technologies within the university and with outside collaborators, including key industrial partners such as JEOL and Seagate.

The investment in the four York equipment bundles to provide state-of-the-art equipment in advanced materials and analytical science will significantly enhance our capability to produce economic and societal impact of our research in the areas supported. This will be done by ensuring that the opportunities for licencing IP, creating commercial ventures and engaging with users are optimised, in addition to building the skills and capabilities of future employees in key industrial sectors related to advanced materials and analytical science. The impacts of the research will be enabled by externally facing facilities at the University of York, such as the Centre of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry (CoEMS), the York Plasma Institute and the York JEOL Nanocentre.

Bundle 1: Advanced Materials for Next generation Devices
This has the potential to impact of RF and microwave applications of magnetic materials by providing the size reduction and increased performance required for developments in mobile devices. The development of new magnetic materials can help remove fundamental physical bottlenecks to enable the field of spintronics to be fully exploited in the field of data storage. The equipment will also increase the understanding of plasma surface interactions which are key to understanding the applications of plasma technologies, which have the potential to be used in advanced manufacturing, medicine and materials science. The equipment provided in Bundle 1 will also have impacts on nanofabrication techniques, big data technologies and oxide based electronics.

Bundle 2: Replacement of FE-SEM with Associated Sample Preparation Tools
This replacement will ensure that the impacts that can be derived by FE-SEM are optimised. The significant funding already in place and the relevance of the tool to the project ensures that the equipment would make a impact across a wide range of technical areas. Also, the high number of industrially related projects in those bidding for the equipment will ensure that work of high impact will result. This bundle of equipment has the capability to have an impact in the field of Big Data by contributing to the development of low cost processors via the development of non-destructive evaluation methods of junction uniformity. The equipment will support developments that will have an impact in the semiconductor industry and be of benefit to companies who provide testing and characterisation services to that industry.

Bundle 3: Bio-Inspired Technologies
The equipment provided in this bundle will support research at the interface of the physical and biological sciences with the potential to have impact on a broad spectrum of stakeholders from manufacturers of analytical and diagnostic equipment, the electronics industry and software developers to healthcare providers and utility companies. The equipment will enable further exploration in the use of biological principals to inspire software and hardware solutions, including low-power DNA-electronic hybrid systems and autonomous swarm robotics. This bundle will also underpin many potential impacts in the healthcare sector, such as tissue engineering and clinical diagnostics where it will enhance the understanding of protein-protein interactions at the cellular level. Other impacts include the development of new technologies for monitoring air and water pollution.

Bundle 4: Orbitrap Fusion Mass Spectrometer
This equipment will enable impacts in the areas of biological, pharmaceutical, chemical, geological, environmental and historical/archaeological science, and support research in the high impact areas of bioenergy, catalysis, materials, tissue engineering, and antimicrobial resistance. The addition of the Orbitrap Fusion to the CoEMS will make the facility the pre-eminent open-access mass spectrometry facility in the UK and so will help deliver impacts through the research across the N8 Consortium as well as more broadly in the UK.