Integration of Computation and Experiment for Accelerated Materials Discovery

Society faces major challenges that require disruptive new materials solutions. For example, there is a worldwide demand for materials for sustainable energy applications, such as safer new battery technologies or the efficient capture and utilization of solar energy. This project will develop an integrated approach to designing, synthesizing and evaluating new functional materials, which will be developed across organic and inorganic solids, and also hybrids that contain both organic and inorganic modules in a single solid.

The UK is well placed to boost its knowledge economy by discovering breakthrough functional materials, but there is intense global completion. Success, and long-term competitiveness, is critically dependent on developing improved capability to create such materials. All technologically advanced nations have programmes that address this challenge, exemplified by the $100 million of initial funding for the US Materials Genome Initiative.

The traditional approach to building functional materials, where the properties arise from the placement of the atoms, can be contrasted with large-scale engineering. In engineering, the underpinning Newtonian physics is understood to the point that complex structures, such as bridges, can be constructed with millimetre precision. By contrast, the engineering of functional materials relies on a much less perfect understanding of the relationship between structure and function at the atomic level, and a still limited capability to achieve atomic level precision in synthesis. Hence, the failure rate in new materials synthesis is enormous compared with large-scale engineering, and this requires large numbers of researchers to drive success, placing the UK at a competitive disadvantage compared to larger countries. The current difficulty of materials design at the atomic level also leads to cultural barriers: in building a bridge, the design team would work closely with the engineering construction team throughout the process. By contrast, the direct, day-to-day integration of theory and synthesis to identify new materials is not common practice, despite impressive advances in the ability of computation to tackle more complex systems. This is a fundamental challenge in materials research.

This Programme Grant will tackle the challenge by delivering the daily working-level integration of computation and experiment to discover new materials, driven by a closely interacting team of specialists in structure and property prediction, measurement and materials synthesis. Key to this will be unique methods developed by our team that led to recent landmark publications in Science and Nature. We are therefore internationally well placed to deliver this timely vision.

Our approach will enable discovery of functional materials on a much faster timescale. It will have broad scope, because we will develop it across materials types with a range of targeted properties. It will have disruptive impact because it uses chemical understanding and experiment in tandem with calculations that directly exploit chemical knowledge. In the longer term, the approach will enable a wide range of academic and industrial communities in chemistry and also in physics and engineering, where there is often a keener understanding of the properties required for applications, to design better materials. This approach will lead to new materials, such as battery electrolytes, materials for information storage, and photocatalysts for solar energy conversion, that are important societal and commercial targets in their own right.

We will exploit discoveries and share the approach with our commercial partners via the Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry and the new Materials Innovation Factory, a £68 million UK capital investment in state-of-the-art materials research facilities for both academic and industrial users. Industry and the Universities commit 55% of the project cost.

The need for accelerated approaches to identify materials with enhanced performance is internationally recognised. New functional materials can transform many other disciplines and application areas in science and engineering, such as healthcare, information storage, catalysis, transport, energy storage, use and generation. This produces two main types of impact from the project.

The new functional materials generated can have impacts in specific areas: for example, a new solid electrolyte for a lithium battery to replace a potentially flammable liquid electrolyte. We will exploit these materials with our industrial partners, with academics working at higher technology readiness levels (e.g., in materials, device and manufacturing engineering) and with a wider industrial network.

The project approach itself will have broader, long-term impact. The modular, integrated approach that accelerates materials discovery has the potential to identify valuable functional materials beyond our initial targets. It may also open up new types of material not readily accessed by less integrated approaches. This will generate impact over multiple sectors by helping researchers working across the full spectrum of materials types, their functions and applications, to address the current and unpredictable future needs of society. This breadth of impact arises from the project focus on both organic and inorganic materials, and hybrids, and its integration of computation and experiment. A narrower programme would impact fewer communities. Industry in particular frames problems around function, rather than specific materials, and hence needs capability that spans materials types.

Day-one partners Johnson Matthey, NPL, Exxon, NSG, Unilever, and Ceres Power will benefit from specific technical developments, for example in complex multicomponent systems, and from new thermoelectric, ion transporting, catalytic, multiferroic, electroceramic, transparent conducting and photocatalytic materials. They commit £1.35 M in support, demonstrating industry interest in the project vision. They have strong networks to raise the technology readiness level (TRL) of project outputs. These leading innovators see the potential of the integrated PG approach to accelerate materials discovery and development to meet ever more challenging performance needs: new manufacturing methods allow more advanced materials to be integrated into product design at scale, so the project vision for accelerated discovery of such materials could radically change industry strategies.

We have a successful strategy for dissemination to large and small UK companies working in cognate areas (e.g., BP, Datalase, ACAL Energy) by the Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry, formed by the Liverpool investigators with Manchester, Bolton and STFC Daresbury in 2009. The £68 M Materials Innovation Factory (open Q2 2016) will allow daily interaction of PG researchers with industry, and enable engagement with the research community by hosting visits from new partner groups engaged through extensive profile-raising activity.

Society will benefit through enhanced energy, safety and resource efficiency, and reduced environmental impacts associated with higher performance materials, enhancing quality of life. The new approach will enable replacements to be sought for materials reliant for their function on rare, toxic, or hard-to-access elements, thereby removing risk from many sectors of society and industry and creating commercial opportunities. The training and mentoring of a cohort of at least 34 researchers expert in the integrated approach will be a competitive advantage to the UK, and a benefit to society, because these workers will apply the methods in industry and a range of academic disciplines. A summer school and project symposia will further disseminate training benefits.