Directed Assembly Grand Challenge Network Continuation

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 nano-scale 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.

Ongoing 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.

The research field of directed assembly has great relevance in many areas affecting the society of the future, including healthcare and transport.
With an aging 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 bio-compatible, 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.

By linking together academic expertise and industrial requirements and helping develop an understanding of each other's operating cultures, the Directed Assembly Network assists in speeding the uptake of new technologies into production processes, thereby maintaining the UK's industrial competitiveness.