Engineering Fellowships for Growth: Polar Materials for Additive Manufacturing

增材制造（AM）的概念被视为英国制造业重新平衡的重要贡献者。增材制造能够制造具有新颖材料组合的复杂结构，为消费者和工业市场创造创新产品。它同样适用于批量生产或定制产品。原材料使用的内在经济性使成本保持在较低水平，设计迭代的快速周转最大限度地缩短了新产品上市的时间。由于有机导体和半导体的进步，塑料电子的概念是使用AM的多功能产品的主要贡献者。这些进步在包括智能手机和平板电脑在内的许多消费产品中都很明显。提议的奖学金旨在解决增材制造和柔性电子产品的能力差距。缺少的能力是高极性固体的am兼容集成，如用于电容器，压电器件和红外传感器。这些功能通常由铁电氧化物（例如钛酸钡和PZT）以高温烧结的陶瓷形式满足，目前只能以分立元件的形式部署。这限制了AM提供的灵活性和潜在的成本节约。用于光子功能的可印刷有机材料并不能提供一种可接受的解决方案，以满足对这种高极性电介质的需求，因为相关的优点数字比氧化物低一到两个数量级。电容器和压电换能器在传统电子产品中无处不在，将它们设计成可打印产品的能力是未来AM系统的“必备条件”，例如，可以完全集成压力传感器、能量收集和储能电容器。该项目将采用自下而上的整体方法，有三个创新：(i)制备高结晶、单分散、铁电纳米晶体；（ii）实施多尺度建模，以优化可印刷、高极化器件的设计；（iii）利用铁电极化，促进纳米晶体在印刷过程中自组装成功能上有益的晶体取向。这些创新将用于设计新的可打印功能组件，这些组件可以集成到通过增材制造技术生产的机电产品中。一个成功的结果将导致降低成本和交货时间，将新的功能材料集成到增材制造产品。该奖学金还将被用作一个平台，以(i)启动铁电纳米晶体的新应用方案，（ii）促进功能氧化物研究重新聚焦于与英国工业中长期需求相一致的目标。

The concept of Additive Manufacturing (AM) is seen as an important contributor to the re-balancing of UK manufacturing industry. AM enables the manufacture of complex structures with novel combinations of materials, to create innovative products for both the consumer and industrial markets. It can be applied equally to mass-production or bespoke products. The intrinsic economy of raw material usage keeps costs low and the rapid turn-round of design iterations minimizes the time to market for new products. Due to progress in organic conductors and semiconductors, the concept of plastic electronics is a major contributor to multifunctional products using AM. These advances are evident in many consumer products including smartphones and tablet PCs. The proposed Fellowship is intended to address a capability gap in AM and flexible electronics. The missing capability is in the AM-compatible integration of highly polar solids, as used in capacitors, piezoelectric devices and infra-red sensors. These functions are normally satisfied by ferroelectric oxides (e.g. barium titanate and PZT) in the form of ceramics which are sintered at high temperature, and can currently only be deployed in the form of discrete components. This limits both the flexibility and potential cost-savings offered by AM. Printable organic materials, as used in photonic functions, do not provide an acceptable solution to the demand for such highly polar dielectrics as the relevant figures of merit are one or two orders of magnitude lower than oxides. Capacitors and piezo-transducers are ubiquitous in conventional electronics and the ability to design them into printable products is a "must have" for future AM systems, allowing full integration of pressure sensors, energy harvesting and energy storage capacitors, for example.The project will employ a bottom-up, holistic approach with three innovations: (i) the preparation of highly crystalline, monodisperse, ferroelectric nanocrystals, (ii) the implementation of multi-scale modelling for the optimal design of printable, high-polarisability devices and (iii) utilization of ferroelectric polarization to promote self-assembly of nanocrystals into functionally beneficial crystallographic orientations during printing operations. These innovations will be employed to design new printable functional components that can be integrated into electromechanical products produced by AM techniques. A successful outcome will result in reduced costs and lead times for integrating new functional materials into AM products. The Fellowship will also be used as a platform to (i) initiate programmes on new applications of ferroelectric nanocrystals and (ii) facilitate the re-focusing of functional oxide research on goals coherent with medium to long-term UK industry needs.