INSPIRE Physical Sciences: A synergy for next generation materials science

在全球人口增加的情况下，对能源成本以及当前工业和经济基础设施的可持续性的日益关切，使开发能够支持改进的工业和经济模式的变革性、可持续技术成为全人类的当务之急。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，这可能会打开新的科学和技术地平线，并对社会、经济和政治产生积极影响。这些元素使对变革性、多功能材料的研究成为英国和世界各地资助机构和行业的优先事项。最近，一类新的多功能材料--拓扑绝缘体开始受到科学的关注，因为它们具有诱人的物理性质，在储能、生物传感和量子计算等广泛领域具有潜在的应用前景。对这些材料的科学兴趣源于这样一种认识，即与绝大多数已知材料不同，拓扑绝缘体可以极好地传导电流通过其表面(甚至像超导体一样)，但不能通过其本体。此外，由于控制固体中电子(晶体)动量和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)，最终结果是没有能量或信息消耗。与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不同的技术领域产生的潜在开创性影响，很容易定义在物理学、化学、工程学、医学和健康科学之间的交叉学科研究的当代前沿之一。这进而要求多学科的研究方法，并几乎立即暴露出当前研究结构的两个局限性，即不同研究群体之间存在的有限联系，以及缺乏共同语言以实现有效的知识转移和组织。在这些考虑的推动下，并与现有预算相兼容，我们将以拓扑绝缘体为例研究多功能材料，以建立一个多学科研究平台和先驱：(I)通过汇集在固体和表面化学、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，创建一种共同的研究语言，电子传输和超导。(Ii)材料科学中新的和独立的研究方案，其中将执行所有步骤，包括合成、掺杂、表面分析、电子传输测量和数据的第一性原理解释，目的是促进专业知识的混合和基于实践的理解，以了解一个项目伙伴在另一个项目的研究领域使用的方法的实际限制和潜力。(Iii)关于化学掺杂改善拓扑绝缘体的潜力以及其对环境介质的化学稳定性的新研究。(Iv)关于多铁材料用于(光)催化应用的潜力的初步研究。在拨款结束时，该平台将确定一种共同语言，并获得制定全面赠款所需的广泛专业知识和凝聚力，这些赠款将不限于对现有(无论多么有趣)材料的修改，而是将处理对新颖、可持续产生的、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.