Global energy consumption is rising daily at an astronomical rate. In 2021, we used 176,431 TWh worldwide, which was more than double the amount consumed in 1982 and over six times that used in 1950. Whilst the use of renewable energy has been increasing in recent years, it still only accounts for ca. 16% of our energy consumption, and it is projected that renewables will account for only ca. 20% of global consumption in 2040. Currently, the biggest barrier to the uptake of renewable energy, particularly wind and solar electricity, is the inherent intermittency of the power production and the lack of scalable methods of storing electrical energy. Despite this, there is still a mismatch between the R&D efforts on energy capture and energy storage. Existing energy storage devices are assembled via multiple laborious processing steps and typically employ flammable solvents and fossil fuel-derived materials with poor thermal and chemical stability. Hence, there is a need to identify new solutions for sustainable energy storage. Together with this, materials generated from renewable feedstocks are desperately required to displace fossil fuel-derived products currently used around the world. Strikingly, only ca. 1% of all current polymer and plastic materials are made from renewable resources. The aim of this project is to develop safe, reliable, sustainable and commercially relevant next generation responsive gel electrolyte materials which will facilitate better green energy storage solutions. We will create bespoke functional, renewable polymers that possess unique material properties which make them excellent choices for a plethora of practical applications compared to existing materials currently used. When these unique polymers are combined with ionic liquids, they can form hybrid ionic liquid-polymer gel electrolytes called ionogels - these ionogels are not only more environmentally friendly gel electrolytes but they have enhanced, responsive mechanical properties with a broader scope of applications in fuel and solar cells, transistors, actuators and battery electrolytes. This transformative research programme will deliver new sustainable, responsive ionogel materials with minimal polymer loading (less than 3% w/w), achieved using novel block copolymer solution self-assembly strategies and importantly via greener one-pot processes for in situ ionogel formation, significantly enhancing the industrial viability of these ionogel preparation routes. The ionogels developed in this project will address the significant shortcomings in the underutilisation of renewable energy in the coming years and will thus contribute to the UK's drive to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Given the desperate need for sustainable energy storage solutions, as recognised by the UN with Sustainable Development Goal 7 on affordable and clean energy, the proposed research is timely and impactful.

The University of Edinburgh (UoE) is an international centre for soft matter research. Soft matter scientists study complex liquids in which there are structures intermediate in size between the small molecules making up the solvent and the macroscopic world of structures visible to the naked eye. The structures may be pigment particles in paint (colloids), self-assembled aggregates of soap molecules in washing-up liquid (surfactant micelles), bubbles (say, in whipped cream) or long-chain molecules (polymers) such as DNA (as used in gene transfection). The field is of fundamental interest because the properties of these materials are controlled by many competing length and time scales, and can change dramatically under everyday conditions. Such materials are also ubiquitous in formulations of all kinds, such as medicines (CALPOL is a suspension of colloidal paracetamol) and personal care products (a shampoo is a surfactant-polymer mixture). They are also key intermediates in many sectors: all ceramics, for example, begin as soft pastes (think potter's clay) that are pumped into moulds or extruded before they are sintered at high temperatures to form the final hard products. A fundamental challenge in soft matter is to figure out the way these intermediate structural elements are organised, and how such organisation changes in response to external forces. Most of such materials are opaque to light, so that optical microscopies of all kinds are not useful except to give surface information. As a result, scientists sometimes resort to various kinds of electron microscopy, which, however, operate in a vacuum, so that wet samples are desiccated and their native structures destroyed. A major development in the last decades is cryogenic scanning electron microscopy (cryo-SEM). A native, wet soft sample is frozen in liquid nitrogen, using special techniques to ensure rapidity of cooling to preserve intricate microstructures. Then these frozen samples are fractured, exposing internal structures to be imaged by SEM. (One disadvantage is that samples fracture more or less randomly, so that what is exposed to view is haphazard.) A single cryo-SEM instrument exists at UoE. This decade-old instrument is limited in both resolution (ten times worse than the best instruments today) and in access for soft matter scientists, as it requires laborious conversion of the system to cryogenic mode. We propose to purchase a state-of-the-art cryo-SEM to enable this cutting-edge technique to become routinely available for day-to-day work. This purchase is timely, because cryo-SEM has recently been revolutionised for soft matter researchers by the addition of focussed ion beam (FIB). This powerful technique uses a focused beam of charged atoms (ions) to cut and section specimens very accurately inside the SEM. This not only allows the user to expose desired sections at will, but also to build up a complete 3D picture (literally) by imaging the sample section by section to a resolution of 10 nm (100 times the size of atoms). We propose to purchase a cryo-FIB SEM. The technique is so new that we know of only two current instruments in the UK, neither of which is dedicated to the study of soft matter. We propose to add X-ray tomography capability to our cryo-FIB SEM. This allows us to build up a 3D picture non-destructively to 350 nm resolution, much like the way X-ray CT scanners build up 3D images of the body in hospitals. The availability of this combined suite of instruments will transform the ability of soft matter scientists to see inside their samples routinely. A host of exciting applications immediately follow. One example is 'designer electrodes' based on novel soft materials that minimise expansion/shrinkage during charge/discharge cycles. A programme of outreach and training will make this facility available to academic and industrial researchers UK-wide.

Repercussions of the semiconductor manufacturing crisis in 2021-2022 have highlighted how much modern society depends on semiconductor technologies. Semiconductors are an important part of the UK economy, with a market worth around $8bn in 2020 and still on the rising. Semiconductors are fundamental components of electronic and optoelectronic devices thus playing a key-role in the advancement of a number of seemingly unrelated technologies such as the field of microelectronics, the renewable energy sector and the communication sector. Traditional semiconductors such as silicon are getting pushed to the edge of their physical limits by the constantly increasing and often conflicting requirements of modern devices. van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors and related two-dimensional materials (2D) can provide a solution to these challenges due their ability to overcome some of the physical limitations affecting traditional semiconductors. This EPSRC New Investigator Award will support the growth of the UK semiconductor department by designing mixed-anions vdW semiconductors with new and improved functionalities, and a scalable deposition method to produce them. Prime example of vdW semiconductors are black phosphorous (BP) or transitional metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Most vdW materials are either metallic or insulating. Only few chemical families, such as BP or TMDs possess semiconducting properties and can be exfoliated to 2D form. This limits the functionalities that can be accessed to those available in these chemistries. The variety of functionalities available in vdW semiconductors can be drastically increased if we leverage the properties of multiple anions to design new materials with new functionalities. This was recently demonstrated for CrSBr, a rare case of 2D ferromagnetic semiconductor. I will further advance this field by designing new mixed-anion vdW semiconductors belonging to the family of metal chalcohalides and metal oxyhalides that display high mobility of the electrical carriers, non-linear optical properties and room temperature ferroelectricity. To boost the manufacturability of these materials, I will modify the Polymer Assisted Deposition (PAD) method to enable simultaneous insertion of multiple anions at once. This method is scalable and cost-effective, thus suitable to rapidly move across the technology readiness levels (TRL) scale towards industrialization. The PAD method will also be pivotal in allowing the chemical flexibility to design materials with targeted properties based on the unique physical and chemical properties of the incorporated anions. For example, in oxyhalides, the choice of the halide will determine the size of the material's fundamental band gap, determining the material's ability to absorb or emit a different portion of visible light. This enables an atomic control over the materials' properties based on the anion inserted. The relevance of these materials for the semiconductor industry will be finally demonstrated by fabricating current rectifying devices (e.g., p-n junctions), whose properties must be equal or superior to those of the industrial standard, silicon.

Commercial water electrolysers based on proton exchange membrane (PEM) or solid polymer electrolytes (SPE) enable hydrogen production from pure (demineralised) water and electricity. They offer advantages over alkaline electrolyuser technologies; greater energy efficiency, higher production rates (per unit electrode area), and more compact design. The restricting aspects of these systems are the high cost of the materials; such as the electrolyte membrane and noble metal-based electrocatalysts and the electrical energy input. PEM based water electrolysers operate at temperatures of < 80 oC and have a minimum energy requirement, determined by the equilibrium cell potential (standard potential). Practical cells require higher voltages due to polarisation at electrodes and ohmic voltage losses; raising both energy and economic cost. By operating cells at higher temperatures the free energy of the cell reaction and thus the equilibrium potential falls. Thus solid oxide steam electrolysers (SOSE) operating at high temperatures (>800C) are under development but require a source of thermal energy at high temperatures; which is frequently not available or is expensive to supply. Operating at lower temperatures (150-350 C) gives benefits of reduced energy requirements (thermodynamic potential around 1.12V) and potentially a more practical solution in terms of coupling the thermal energy requirements to provide steam for the cell and reducing the constraints on materials required for very high temperatures.Operating at lower temperatures (150-350C) can also give benefits of reduction in Pt catalyst use and/or use of non-Pt catalysts for electrodes as well as reduced proton conducting membrane costs. In these ways capital and operating costs of PEM hydrogen electrolysers can both be reduced. The aim of this project is to start a collaborative programme between two complimentary groups in the UK and South Africa, that focuses on the development of hydrogen electrolysers in the intermediate temperature range (~200C) that will also have spillover benefits on its sister technology, PEM fuel cells. This programme thereby focuses on a new technology to compete with the two more established electrolysis technologies. The standard PEM electrolyser is already available (low risk) but its electrical efficiency is low. The intermediate temperature PEM electrolyser, although more speculative, could prove valuable if renewable electricity generation increases. Development of this technology requires significant investment into electrolyte research. Existing exploratory research on this topic at Newcastle helps to reduce the risk associated with new electrolyte development.An aim of this project is to increase the operating temperatures of PEM electrolysers through the use of proton conducting membranes; with inorganic and composite electrolytes; thereby reducing voltage requirements (knowing that the standard thermodynamic cell potential falls whilst the activity of electrocatalysts increases). Although high temperature electrolysers (>600C) using oxide ceramic proton conductors have been researched there has been no significant research of the intermediate temperature range between approximately 150-300 C.

Photovoltaic (PV) devices convert sunlight directly into electricity and so are set to play a major role in the global renewable energy landscape in the coming decades as humanity transitions to a low carbon future. Today's PVs are based on conventional semiconductors which are relatively energy-intensive to produce and largely restricted to rigid flat plate designs. Consequently, PVs that can be fabricated by printing at low temperature onto flexible substrates are attractive for a broad range of applications in buildings and transportation, where flexibility, colour-tuneability, light-weight and low cost are essential requirements. Two emerging PV technologies that have strong potential to meet these requirements are organic PVs and perovskite PVs. It is however widely recognised that these classes of PV can only fulfill their full cost-advantage and functional advantages over conventional thin film PVs if a suitable transparent, flexible electrode is forthcoming. Indium-tin oxide (ITO) is currently the dominant transparent conductor used in opto-electronics, including PVs. However, its fragile ceramic nature makes it poorly compatible with flexible substrates and indium has been identified as a 'critical raw material' for the European economic area, due to the high risk of supply shortages expected in the next 10 years. Consequently there is a need to develop a viable alternative to ITO and conducting oxide electrodes in general, particularly for utility in PVs where large quantities will be needed in the coming decades to help address the threat posed by global warming. This proposal seeks to address this challenge by developing a high performance transparent electrode based on a copper grid that can be integrated with the rest of the PV device by simple lamination. This approach avoids the inevitable compromises in electrode transparency and conductivity that arise when using the conventional approach of fabricating the transparent electrode directly on top of the rest of device. Two unconventional approaches to fabricating this electrode using low cost sustainable materials and processes will be explored. The outputs have the potential to be transformative for the advancement of OPV and PPV, as well numerous other optoelectronic devices requiring a transparent top-electrode. The UK is a global leader in the development of materials and processes for next generation PVs and so the outputs of the proposed research has strong potential to directly increase the economic competitiveness of the UK in this increasingly important sector and will help to address the now time critical challenge of climate change due to global warming.