Lancaster University ECR Equipment

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This funding will be used to support new research equipment for Lancaster University's early career researchers (ECRs) in our Materials Science Institute (MSI), in line with EPSRC's World Class Labs initiative.Lancaster's MSI is a strategic focus for the University, bringing together all of our academics in the Materials Science space for the first time around a number of common research themes. This funding is centred around the first theme of the MSI recently launched in September 2017 - Active Surfaces and Interfaces, encouraging extensive collaboration between chemistry, engineering and physics, involving 42 academics, of which 40% are ECRs. Many of these ECRs have been attracted to Lancaster through our 50th Anniversary Lectureship scheme, which aims to nurture the research leaders of tomorrow, with significant teaching relief and a fantastic package of support for their career and research development.This investment from EPSRC, along with preceding institutional investment (totalling £55M over the past 6 years) will enable world-class research into a new class of three-dimensional organic and organometallic structures with tailored porosity and functionality. These new materials will have applications in topics such as energy storage and conversion, heterogeneous catalysis and quantum technologies. It is important to note that these areas of research did not exist at Lancaster prior to appointment of our ECRs and only came together with the formation of the MSI and the interdisciplinary opportunities it afforded.Understanding the exact nature of the structure and properties of these materials (and of many others) is a key issue in this research area, typified by restrictions in the capabilities available to characterise them. This problem is often a limiting factor in new materials development and thus this bid will provide equipment to enable these characterisations, speeding up the process of new materials development by providing excellent ECRs with world-class facilities. The ECRs that will benefit from this equipment will be strategically positioned to exploit: comprehensive multiscale capabilities in fabricating materials ranging from molecular structure to bulk material; world-leading materials characterisation; and expertise in applying materials science innovations to real world problems.