Phase III of The Directed Assembly EPRSC Grand Challenge Network: From Discovery to Translation

The vision of the Network is to be able to control the assembly of matter with sufficient certainty and precision to allow preparation of materials and molecular assemblies with far more sophisticated and tuneable properties and functions than are accessible in materials synthesised using current methods.

In this Grand Challenge we aim to gain unprecedented control of the assembly of molecules that are the building blocks of many functional materials, consumer and industrial products. We start by understanding the assembly of the very small, but methods we explore will allow production of new types of useful materials at a whole range of length scales from the nanoscale to the everyday. Such materials will have outstanding impact in areas of societal importance such as personalised healthcare and food production, transport systems and fuel production, housing construction and consumer electronics.

Through this intelligent approach to design we will compete effectively with the USA, Japan and mainland Europe to place the UK firmly at the forefront of developments in the areas of manufacturing, healthcare and energy.
The added value that the Network provides is in gathering the widest group of internationally-leading expert scientists from across a range of disciplines in the UK, and providing them with a challenge, a focus and a vision that they help shape.

On-going economic prosperity in the UK is critically dependent on having a competitive, high-tech manufacturing industry.
Some areas of the Directed Assembly Network's activities address barriers to progress in existing industries; others will create the transformative industries of the future. Society is challenged by a growing and aging population, and through declining natural resources. The goals we reach for will drive great breakthroughs in healthcare and offer alternatives to harvesting our limited reserves.

The UK has already been identified as being world-class or world-leading in many of the individual disciplines needed to tackle these targets, but real breakthroughs will only be made by harnessing interdisciplinary excellence from across the UK - the Directed Assembly Network is key to the formation and maintenance of this interdisciplinary community. Other countries are already investing heavily in programmes to progress materials science; by adopting the recommendations above, the UK can enhance its scientific capability and keep pace at international levels, develop absorptive capacity and retain the competitive advantage needed to be a world player in the field of future manufacturing.

Since its launch in 2010, the DAGCN has become embedded into the culture of those working in Directed Assembly and is known as a place to go to for mentoring, advice and support. The Network has awarded 23 pump-priming grants over the last four years. These, together with meetings have been instrumental in leveraging approximately £50M of major grant funding. A community of 970 multi-disciplinary members from across the UK, including 112 industry members and 260 early career researchers has been engaged, nurtured and brought together with a common aim: the Directed Assembly Grand Challenge. Over 45 meetings have been held directly that have led to 80 new collaborations. A culture change has been widely noted since the inception of the Network in both the way rival companies now commonly work together at pre-competitive stages, and, different types of scientists now see each-other as invaluable towards achieving strong relationships and results. Researcher mobility through travel grants and pump-priming projects has contributed to data and equipment sharing, notwithstanding the skills development of the UK research base. The vast 970 community has been engaged consistently and led to a Roadmap setting out the vision for the next 5-50 years.

Developing an understanding of and learning to control molecular assembly and disassembly to engineer functional materials, and to be able to scale-up the processes at scales meaningful for industry will have a huge impact in many areas. The activities of the Directed Assembly Grand Challenge Network (DAGCN) are geared to build communities to focus and accelerate the delivery of these outcomes, and accelerate the journey from discovery to translation and scale-up.

Moving into the next phase of the DAGCN, the activities of the Network have been designed to achieve these impact targets:
(1) Provide a multi-disciplinary supportive environment to tackle the grand challenge: through Network expansion in our designated streams:
(i) directed assembly,
(ii) directed disassembly, and
(iii) translation and up-scaling.
(2) Establish a future self-sustainable network: industrial sponsorship and membership models will be considered through community engagements, ensuring 'buy-in' and putting the Network in good stead for a strong and continuous presence up to and beyond the 50 year Grand Challenge goals.
(3) Enable bidirectional interactions between end users and science base: from discovery to translation.
(4) Provide a forum to exchange ideas via meetings and electronic platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and training through MOOCs.
(5) Nurture and support ideas that will lead to the development of large projects.
(6) Form new multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborations encompassing not only chemists and chemical engineers, but including life scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and industrialists.
(7) Build capability, through our Early Career Researcher mentoring, support, advice and our overall engagement, training activities and other public engagement activities.

This field of research has great relevance in many areas affecting the society of the future, including healthcare and transport. With an ageing population, improved healthcare becomes more important - understanding directed assembly allows improvements in drug delivery and opens up the use of new therapeutic molecules as well as the development of biocompatible, implantable materials, devices and organs. With current concerns around long-term fuel supplies and polluting end-products, the applications of controlled molecular assembly are highly relevant. Transport systems can be made more environmentally-friendly and energy efficient through the use of improved fuel cells, better catalysts and, in the longer term, the possibility of using high-temperature superconductors.

Our work and leisure activities will be enhanced by new consumer electronics based around improved batteries, printable and organic electronics and new display devices. Whilst the most obvious uses of a better understanding of molecular assembly are around creating faster, more efficient chemical synthesis methods and reclamation techniques, a whole range of new technologies are opened up through its application. For example: smart, functionalised, structural materials which can incorporate energy-generation will transform the construction industry; anti-corrosion and anti-fouling treatments for surfaces will improve pipeline flows and the lifetimes of exposed metal; foodstuffs and drug production and delivery will be enhanced by better insight into nucleation, dissolution and the formation of gel structures.