Sir Henry Royce Institute - Liverpool Equipment

Our vision is sustainable international leadership in chemical materials design that will allow the UK to discover new step change functional materials, thus driving inward investment and economic growth. This will be driven by scientific excellence, will be strongly integrated with industrial exploitation, and will link together the world premier groups in the UK to maximise return on investment. Operationally, we will use the existing Materials Innovation Factory (MIF) infrastructure and its business model to ensure that this theme operates as a distinct and unique offering that is accessible to external partners in a clearly branded and state-of-the-art space-this will become the Royce @ Laboratory, and it will operate within the broader 11,600 m2 Materials Innovation Factory. By choosing this route, we ensure strong industrial engagement from the outset: at least 110 industrial researchers from at least two major UK companies will be collocated in the same building on 'day one'. Hence, we can demonstrate cross-sector benefit in this Royce Institute theme to our funders and this greatly enhances future prospects for long-term sustainability of the theme and makes a strong contribution to the Northern Powerhouse legacy.

Our vision relies on the integration of experimental and computational methods to both accelerate materials discovery through design and to open up access to new classes of both 'hard' and 'soft' functional material. The new enabling methodology for materials discovery that we will create will be actively transferred to the direct drivers of economic growth within key UK industry partners. Our capital request comprises equipment, such as the high-throughput 'Formulation Engine', that is unique not only in the UK but also globally.

The Pathways to Impact for this funding will be realised through the collective benefits management activity for The Sir Henry Royce Institute