Breaking FROntiers for advanced engineering of bespoke, functional Biopolymer COmposite materials (FROBCO)

该奖学金项目将采用循环经济方法，释放可再生生物质的巨大潜力，这些生物质可以很容易地从农业/水产养殖/食品工业中作为副产品或废物获得。生物质中含有生物聚合物纤维素、几丁质/壳聚糖、淀粉、蛋白质、海藻酸盐和木质素，是制造环保材料的宝贵资源。此外，这些生物聚合物具有独特的性质和功能，这使得它们在重要的、快速增长的应用中具有很大的潜力，例如治疗剂输送、组织工程支架、生物器件、绿色电子、传感、染料和重金属去除、油/水分离和光学。然而，在加工生物聚合物并经济有效地实现所需的性能/功能方面存在巨大的挑战；这些宝贵的生物质资源长期未得到充分利用。这项雄心勃勃且富有冒险精神的研究将从跨学科的角度关注材料配方和工程过程的智能设计，以实现生物聚合物复合材料在单一流动过程下的组装。这最终将导致一种基于3D打印的重新发明的、具有成本效益的工程技术，以生产具有定制结构、性能和功能的各种坚固的生物聚合物复合材料。由于生物聚合物的多种化学修饰，定制的“绿色”材料有望在组织工程和控制释放等特定应用中优于许多合成聚合物和复合材料。这一变革性项目的成果不仅将提供导致全新研究领域的基础知识，而且还将提供突破性的技术，通过为高端技术领域（例如医疗保健和农业）提供真正可持续和高性能的选择，从而影响英国的塑料行业。

This fellowship programme will take a circular economy (CE) approach and unlock the huge potential of renewable biomass, which can be easily sourced from agriculture/aquaculture/food industry as byproducts or wastes. The biomass contains biopolymers cellulose, chitin/chitosan, starch, protein, alginate and lignin, which are valuable resources for making environmentally friendly materials. Moreover, these biopolymers have unique properties and functions, which make them highly potential in important, rapidly growing applications such as therapeutic agent delivery, tissue engineering scaffolds, biological devices, green electronics, sensing, dye and heavy metal removal, oil/water separation, and optics. However, enormous challenges exist to process biopolymers and achieve desired properties/functions cost-effectively; these valuable biomass resources have long been underutilised. This proposed ambitious and adventurous research will focus on the smart design of materials formulation and engineering process from an interdisciplinary perspective to realise the assembly of biopolymer composite materials under a single flow process. This will eventually lead to a reinvented, cost-effective engineering technology based on 3D printing to produce a diverse range of robust, biopolymer composite materials with tailored structure, properties and functionality. Due to the versatile chemistry of biopolymers for modification, the bespoke 'green' materials are expected to outperform many synthetic polymers and composites for specific applications such as tissue engineering and controlled release. The outcomes of this transformative project will not only provide fundamental knowledge leading to a completely new line of research, but also deliver ground-breaking technologies that will impact the UK's plastic industry by providing truly sustainable and high-performance options for high-end technological areas (e.g. healthcare and agriculture).