INSPIRE Physical Sciences: A synergy for next generation materials science

面对全球人口的增长，人们日益关注能源成本以及当前工业和经济基础设施的可持续性，这使得能够支持改进工业和经济模式的变革性、可持续技术的发展成为整个人类的紧迫优先事项。对这些技术发展至关重要的是对新材料的定义和理解，正如人类历史上以前发生的那样，这些新材料可以打开新的科学和技术视野，并对社会、经济和政治产生积极影响。这些因素使得对变革性多功能材料的研究成为英国和世界范围内资助机构和行业的优先事项。最近，一类新的多功能材料——拓扑绝缘体，由于其吸引人的物理特性，在能源存储、生物传感和量子计算等广泛领域具有潜在的应用，已经开始受到科学界的关注。对这些材料的科学兴趣源于这样一种认识：与绝大多数已知材料不同，拓扑绝缘体可以通过它们的表面，但不能通过它们的体积，很好地传导电流（甚至和超导体一样好）。此外，由于控制（晶体）动量和固体中电子自旋之间关系的量子力学定律，拓扑绝缘体的表面可以用来传输信息，而不需要移动电荷（就像在当代电子设备中发生的那样），其净结果是没有能量或信息耗散。拓扑绝缘体研究伴随的科学挑战的广度，以及它们的发展可能在非常多样化的技术领域产生的潜在的突破性影响，很容易定义物理、化学、工程、医学和健康科学之间跨学科研究的当代前沿之一。这反过来又需要一种多学科的研究方法，并且几乎立即揭示了当前研究结构的两个局限性：不同研究团体之间存在的有限联系，以及缺乏一种允许有效的知识转移和组织的共同语言。考虑到这些因素，并与现有预算相一致，我们将以拓扑绝缘体作为多功能材料的案例研究，以建立一个多学科的研究平台和先驱：(i)通过汇集在固态和表面化学，磁性和生物传感，电子显微镜，计算化学，催化和光催化方面具有不同技能和专业知识的研究人员，创造一种共同的研究语言；电子传递和超导性。（ii）材料科学中新颖和独立的研究方案，其中包括合成，掺杂，表面分析，电子传输测量和数据的第一原理解释在内的所有步骤将被执行，目的是有利于专业知识的混合和基于实践的理解，一个项目合作伙伴在其他研究领域使用的方法的实际局限性和潜力。（三）在改进拓扑绝缘体的化学掺杂潜力及其对环境剂的化学稳定性方面进行新的研究。（iv）初步研究多铁材料在（光）催化应用方面的潜力，以备将来申请资助。在资助结束时，该平台将定义一种通用语言，并获得广泛的专业知识和开发全面资助所需的凝聚力，这些资助将不局限于对现有（无论多么有趣）材料的修改，而是将解决新颖、可持续产生、无害环境的多功能材料的研究。

Growing concerns regarding the cost of energy as well as the sustainability of the current industrial and economic infrastructure in front of global population increase have made the development of transformative, sustainable technologies capable of supporting improved industrial and economic models an urgent priority of mankind as a whole. Crucial for these technological developments is the definition and understanding of novel materials which, as previously happened in human history, could unlock new scientific and technological horizons and positively impact across society, economy and politics. These elements have turned research in transformative, multifunctional materials into a priority of funding agencies and Industry both in UK and world-wide. Very recently, a new class of multifunctional materials, topological insulators, has started to receive scientific attention due to their appealing physical properties with potential applications in a broad range of areas as diversified as energy storage, biosensing and quantum computing. The scientific interest in these materials originate from the realisation that, unlike the vast majority of known materials, topological insulators can conduct current extremely well (even as well as superconductors) through their surfaces but not through their bulk. Furthermore, due to quantum mechanical laws governing the relationship between the (crystal) momentum and spin of electrons in a solid, the surfaces of topological insulators could be used to transport information without the need of moving charge (as it happens in contemporary electronics devices) with the net result of no energy or information dissipation.The breadth of the scientific challenges accompanying research in topological insulators, and the potentially ground-breaking impact that their development could generate in very diverse technological fields readily define one of the contemporary frontiers in interdisciplinary research at the boundary between Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Medicine and Health Sciences. This in turn calls for a multidisciplinary research approach and, almost immediately, uncovers two limitations of the current research structure in the limited connections existing between diversified research communities, and in the lack of a common language to allow effective knowledge transfer and organisation.Prompted by these considerations, and compatibly with the available budget, we will take topological insulators as a case study of multifunctional material to establish a multi-disciplinary research platform and pioneer:(i) The creation of a common research language by bringing together researchers with diversified skill sets and expertise in solid state and surface chemistry, magnetism and biosensing, electron microscopy, computational chemistry, catalysis and photocatalysis, electron transport and superconductivity.(ii) Novel and self-contained research protocols in materials science where all the steps including synthesis, doping, surface analysis, electron transport measurement and first principles interpretation of data will be executed with the aim of favouring expertise mixing and practice-based understanding of the actual limitations and potential of the methods used by one project partner in the research field of the others.(iii) Novel research in the potential of chemical doping for improved topological insulators, and in their chemical stability to environmental agents.(iv) Preliminary study about the potential of multiferroic material for (photo-)catalytic application for a future grant application.At the end of the grant, the platform will have defined a common language and acquired a broad range of expertise and the cohesion needed to develop full scale grants that will not be limited to modification of already existing (however interesting) materials, but will tackle research in novel, sustainably generated, environmentally non-hazardous multifunctional materials.