Directed Assembly Grand Challenge Network Continuation

该网络的愿景是能够以足够的确定性和精确度控制物质的组装，从而能够制备具有比使用当前方法合成的材料更复杂和可调的性质和功能的材料和分子组装体。在这个大挑战中，我们的目标是获得对分子组装的前所未有的控制，这些分子是许多功能材料、消费品和工业产品的组成部分。我们从了解非常小的组件开始，但我们探索的方法将允许在从纳米尺度到日常尺度的整个长度范围内生产新型有用材料。这些材料将在具有社会重要性的领域产生巨大影响，如个性化医疗保健和食品生产、运输系统和燃料生产、住房建设和消费电子产品。通过这种智能的设计方法，我们将与美国，日本和欧洲大陆进行有效的竞争，使英国在制造业，医疗保健和能源领域的发展中处于领先地位。该网络提供的附加价值是聚集了来自英国各个学科的最广泛的国际领先的专家科学家，并为他们提供挑战，他们帮助塑造的焦点和愿景。英国持续的经济繁荣严重依赖于具有竞争力的高科技制造业。定向装配网络的一些活动领域解决了现有行业进步的障碍，其他领域将创造未来的变革性行业。社会面临着人口增长和老龄化以及自然资源减少的挑战。我们达到的目标将推动医疗保健领域的重大突破，并为我们有限的储备提供替代方案。英国已经被确定为世界级或世界领先的许多个别学科需要解决这些目标，但真实的突破将只会通过利用跨学科的卓越来自整个英国-定向组装网络是关键的形成和维护这个跨学科的社区。其他国家已经在大力投资于推进材料科学的计划;通过采纳上述建议，英国可以提高其科学能力，跟上国际水平，发展吸收能力，并保持在未来制造领域成为世界参与者所需的竞争优势。

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.