The marine debris catastrophe is beginning to catch serious attention worldwide due to its severe impacts on environment and ecosystem. This project addresses the need for ocean monitoring and cleaning techniques to reduce the effects of marine litter. The proposed project will provide core technologies necessary for the development of Unmanned Surface Vehicle-linked-Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (USV-linked-UUVs) system to enable these vehicles can work more safely, efficiently and collaboratively. To unleash the full potential of ocean exploration, several scientific boundaries must be pushed, ensuring the efficiency of both USV and UUVs. This research will fill critical technological gaps in robotic design, localization, control and coordination to promote the applications of USV and UUV team for marine monitoring and cleaning tasks. In specific, four important advanced technologies will be developed in this project: (i) design of heterogeneous USV-linked-UUVs system, (ii) dynamic behaviors analysis of USV-linked-UUVs System, (iii) path planning optimization-based collaborative control for USV-UUVs team, and (iv) integrated Robotic Operating System-Mission Orientated Operating Suite (ROS-MOOS) middleware to facilitate the communication between UUVs and USV. Theoretical advancements will proceed alongside with experimental research toward demonstrating the potential of marine robotics to efficiently reduce the marine debris.

Nowadays, one of the focal approaches to pursue next generation low power consumption, multifunctional, and green nanoelectronics is to advance the electric field control of lattice, charge, orbital, and spin degrees of freedom. More sophisticated control of these degrees of freedom in new functional materials by external stimuli are desired. In order to control these degrees of freedom, a medium possessing the coupling between these degrees has to be established. The successful incorporation of ferroelectric and magnetic materials has led to a variety of technologies. To further enhance functionalities, as compared with conventional information storage and computer processing electronic devices, electric-field control of ferromagnetism/spin becomes an exciting new paradigm with the potential to impact data storage, spintronics and high-frequency devices. Promising solutions and a rich field of physics reside in the use of magnetoelectric multiferroics, in which the electric field can be employed to switch its magnetic order. Multiferroics that support both strong ferroelectric and magnetic orders are typically insulators with an antiferromagnetic spin arrangement. To achieve electric-field control of ferromagnetism, multiferroics have been used in the form of ferromagnet-multiferroic heterostructures. Among numerous multiferroic systems being explored, BiFeO3 (BFO) is currently the most studied and best understood. BFO exhibits large ferroelectric polarization and G-type antiferromagnetism with weak canted magnetic moment at room temperature making it appealing for applications in non-volatile logic and memory devices. The presence of ferroelectric-antiferromagnetic multiferroic BFO has offered an exciting opportunity for controlling spin through the application of an electric field. Although BFO sets an ideal template of manipulating the spin degree of freedom via electric field, before the realization of new devices, several key issues have to be solved. The primary control parameter is the ferroelectric switching. Solving the ferroelectric reliability issues, such as imprint, retention, and fatigue has to be made prior to realizing a practical device. For example, retention can be addressed to thermodynamic instability of the domain. Asymmetric free energy landscapes between polarizations directed away and toward the substrates result in at least one unstable polarization state. Effects of depolarization fields in the unstable domain become significant when the polarization bound charges are not fully screened. Although efforts on related studies have shown their ways to reduce the energy difference of the polarization double-well by controlling chemical environment, breaking the out-of-plane compositional symmetry, or using strain gradient, ferroelectric retention is still a key issue yet to be dealt with. In order to shed light on the retention problem, we intend to induce the elastic energy term to improve ferroelectric retention of BFO, since the ferroelectric switching of BFO involves a ferroelastic deformation. In our previous study, an observation on a giant improvement of retention in the mixed-phase region of a strained BFO film was found. By taking the advantages of periodic potential distribution, the T/R mixed phase boundaries act as pinning centers of domain walls in the relaxation process. Compared to the reversed domains written by SPM tips in other ferroelectrics, the symmetric potential design based on the BFO periodic strain suggests a possible solution to use elastic energy to improve ferroelectric retention. In this proposal, self-assembled BFO mesocrystal will serve as a model system. We expect the elastic coupling between BFO mesocrystal and surrounding matrix plays an important role to diminish the retention of BFO. The achievement of great improvement on the retention in this system will open a new avenue to ferroelectric retention and possible applications in non-volatile memory and spintronics.

The UK chemical sector has an annual turnover of over £32 billion with 99,000 direct jobs in 2016. The Centre's vision is to transform the UK's chemical industry into a fossil-independent, climate-positive and environmentally-friendly circular chemical economy. The overall novelty of our programme is the development of a sector-wide solution with deep circularity interventions, by creating a circular resources flow of olefin-the raw material for 70% of all organic chemical production. Our whole system approach will include key sectors of production, transportation/distribution, refinery/downstream, use and waste recycling, to reduce fossil reliance and improve productivity and sustainability of the whole process industry. The Centre will generate a cross-disciplinary platform combining synergistic innovations in science/engineering with social scientists to comprehend the whole system industrial symbiosis and market/policy/incentive design. The Core Research Programme is organised around three interconnected themes: (1) Key technologies to enable olefin production from alternative/recycling wastes streams and design more reusable chemicals via advanced catalytic processes; (2) Process integration, whole system analysis and value chain evaluation, and (3) Policy, society and finance. Through detailed process modelling, economic analysis and environmental assessment of technology solutions along the supply chain, accelerated understanding, opportunities and optimum solutions to achieve circularity of olefin-derived resources flow will be attained. These activities are embedded with stakeholders involving all affected groups, including local SMEs and downstream users, and will provide evidence and data for policymakers. The Centre will engage with users through social studies and organised events, and exploit consumer/business behavioural change related to chemical systems enabling a sustainable community and society with innovative technologies.

The UK chemical sector has an annual turnover of over £32 billion with 99,000 direct jobs in 2016. The Centre's vision is to transform the UK's chemical industry into a fossil-independent, climate-positive and environmentally-friendly circular chemical economy. The overall novelty of our programme is the development of a sector-wide solution with deep circularity interventions, by creating a circular resources flow of olefin-the raw material for 70% of all organic chemical production. Our whole system approach will include key sectors of production, transportation/distribution, refinery/downstream, use and waste recycling, to reduce fossil reliance and improve productivity and sustainability of the whole process industry. The Centre will generate a cross-disciplinary platform combining synergistic innovations in science/engineering with social scientists to comprehend the whole system industrial symbiosis and market/policy/incentive design. The Core Research Programme is organised around three interconnected themes: (1) Key technologies to enable olefin production from alternative/recycling wastes streams and design more reusable chemicals via advanced catalytic processes; (2) Process integration, whole system analysis and value chain evaluation, and (3) Policy, society and finance. Through detailed process modelling, economic analysis and environmental assessment of technology solutions along the supply chain, accelerated understanding, opportunities and optimum solutions to achieve circularity of olefin-derived resources flow will be attained. These activities are embedded with stakeholders involving all affected groups, including local SMEs and downstream users, and will provide evidence and data for policymakers. The Centre will engage with users through social studies and organised events, and exploit consumer/business behavioural change related to chemical systems enabling a sustainable community and society with innovative technologies.