Design and green manufacturing of functional nanomaterials

无机纳米材料广泛应用于炼油、食品、涂料、化妆品、纺织、交通运输、医疗保健、电子通信等领域，全球市场规模达200亿欧元。最近的一份清单记录了1800种含有纳米材料的消费品和更多的非商品产品，如工业催化剂和分离介质。然而，在可持续性和可实现的产品质量方面，目前的制造存在局限性。工业使用湿法（化学沉淀法）和干法（火焰或等离子体）工艺制造纳米材料。尽管在后者的进步，它已经表明，湿工艺比干工艺效率高得多。Anastas和同事对湿法工艺进行了可持续性分析，结果显示，与散装化学品的生产相比，纳米材料的生产浪费很大。这给环境造成了巨大的负担，并导致了不可持续的制造业。此外，现有的制造方法无法获得纳米材料的一些关键特性。现有的基于实验室的方法可以合成具有所需性能的纳米材料，然而，这些方法非常浪费，而且不经济，无法扩大规模。因此，这种高价值的材料仍然是小规模的，商业上难以获得。美国国家科学基金会委托的世界技术评估中心的一份报告明确建议，到2020年实现绿色制造是“圣杯”，未来的研究应侧重于模拟自然设计，以开发可扩展的纳米材料制造工艺[Ref. Roco等人，2020年社会需求的纳米技术研究方向，NSF和WTEC， 2010]。我开发了完全合成的新型生物启发纳米材料方法，在室温下在水中快速反应（仅需1-5分钟），几乎不产生废物，但提供了对产品性能的卓越控制。与传统的沉淀工艺相比，该方法可将反应步骤的能耗降低约95%，并且材料与最低等级的商业同类产品一样便宜，但提供明显更好的质量和性能。然而，生物合成的大部分研究都是在小范围内进行的。这种受生物启发的方法还不能扩大规模，因为我们对其规模依赖性的认识存在重大差距。该奖学金旨在应用生物启发路线来提供可持续的（“绿色”），低成本和可扩展的技术来制造高价值的功能纳米材料。我将通过建模和实验测量混合机制来发展比例放大规则。我将设计工艺化学来生产定制的纳米材料，并展示大规模生产的途径。该奖学金有很大的潜力将英国带到可持续定制纳米材料制造的世界领先阶段。

Inorganic nanomaterials are widely used in diverse applications such as oil refining, food, coatings, cosmetics, textile, transport, healthcare and electronics and communication, with a global market worth 20 billion EURO. A recent inventory has documented >1800 consumer products that contain nanomaterials and many more non-commodity products such as industrial catalysts and separation media. However, there are limitations in terms of the sustainability of and the attainable product quality from current manufacturing. Industry uses wet (chemical precipitation) and dry (flame or plasma) processes for manufacturing nanomaterials. Despite the advances in the latter, it has been shown that the wet processes are lot more efficient than the dry processes. Anastas and co-workers performed a sustainability analysis for wet processes, which revealed that nanomaterials manufacturing is significantly wasteful when compared to the production of bulk chemicals. This creates an enormous burden on the environment and results in unsustainable manufacturing.Further, some of the key properties of nanomaterials cannot be obtained with existing manufacturing methods. Lab-based methods exist for synthesising nanomaterials of desired properties, however, these methods are very wasteful and uneconomical to scale-up. Hence such high value materials remain at small scales and commercially inaccessible.A World Technology Evaluation Center report, commissioned by the USA's National Science Foundation, explicitly recommended that achieving green manufacturing by 2020 is the "holy grail" and that future research should focus on emulating natural designs to develop scalable processes for manufacturing nanomaterials [Ref. Roco et al., Nanotechnology Research Directions for Societal Needs in 2020, NSF and WTEC, 2010]. I have developed fully synthetic novel bioinspired approaches to nanomaterials, with rapid reactions (takes only 1-5 minutes) at room temperature in water, producing almost no waste, yet providing superior control of product properties. This method can reduce the energy usage of the reaction step by ~95% when compared with a traditional precipitation process and the materials would as cheap as the lowest grade commercial counterparts, yet provide significantly better quality and properties. However, the bulk of research on bioinspired synthesis has been performed at small scales. The bioinspired method cannot be scaled-up yet because there is a critical gap in our knowledge on its scale dependence.This fellowship aims to apply bioinspired routes to deliver sustainable ("green"), low cost and scalable technologies for manufacturing high value functional nanomaterials. I will develop scale-up rules by modelling and experimentally measuring mixing mechanisms. I will design process chemistry to produce bespoke nanomaterials and demonstrate pathways for larger-scale manufacturing. This fellowship has a great potential to take the UK to the world leading stage in sustainable manufacturing of bespoke nanomaterials.