The FINESSE NanoBio team is proposing a new UK capability in imaging, cross-sectioning and patterning materials that are traditionally very difficult to examine at the nano and sub-nanometre scale without seriously effecting their structure or behaviour. It is important that the UK is placed at the forefront of this research, enabling start-ups, SMEs and large companies to drive innovation and growth with stronger underpinning scientific understanding. To address this, the team is requesting funding for a customised Zeiss NanoFab tool that consists of: 1. An ultra-high precision imaging capability (sub 0.5 nm) of conductive and non-conductive samples 2. An ultra-high precision patterning and TEM sample preparation capability (2 nm) of the same range of samples 3. A cryogenic sample handling system to enable imaging of biological materials and biological or fluid interfaces with materials and structures. The tool achieves this revolutionary performance by focusing a stream of helium ions onto the surface and measuring the subsequently released secondary electrons. Ions can also be used to remove material in their path for patterning or cross-sectioning materials. This system has three ion options, gallium for bulk removal, neon for additional polishing and cutting and helium for very careful polishing. This difference in behaviour is due to the lower mass of the ions. Direct writing of metals in 10nm feature sizes is also feasible with this system, which will enable electrical contacts to be fabricated to advanced functional materials to test, for example, their conductivity or electrochemical behaviour when making sensors. The requested support will have far-reaching impact through the projects and industrial partners of almost 50 research groups actively supporting this proposal in Cambridge, across 10 different Departments and 4 different Schools. This sphere of scientific influence is amplified by the strong support from 5 universities, 2 catapult organisations and 3 industrial network organisations, who represent an estimated 1500 companies. This incredible response by academics and industrial researchers means the facility will also drive new engagement and collaborations between these partiers and will foster collaboration, through for example the planned symposium and engagement events. The commissioning, access, outreach and management will be delivered by a small committee of experienced researchers and microscopy suite managers, with review and guidance from a larger steering group of EPSRC, industrial and academic partners to ensure fair access, an environment that fosters collaborations and postgraduate education.

In November 2016 the UK Government mounted a technical trade mission to India. During this visit the delegation witnessed some of the worst aerial pollution in Delhi's history. At times the air quality was contaminated with 999 mg per cubic metre of particulates almost five times the emission consent of an iron making coke oven! India will be the World's largest economy potentially as early as 2030 requiring a total transformation in energy generation. At the Trade summit Prime Minister Modi detailed a vision for India to leapfrog other countries reliance on fossil fuels harnessing global science implemented locally. As such the timing of SUNRISE could not be better. SUNRISE is an ambitious programme to rapidly accelerate and prove low cost printed PV and tandem solar cells for use in off grid Indian communities within the lifetime of the project. SUNRISE will combine world leading UK research teams from Imperial (Durrant/Nelson), Cambridge (Friend), Oxford (Snaith) a key Indo UK research leader (Uppadaya at Brunel) with an internationally leading photovoltaic scaling activity (SPECIFIC IKC at Swansea University (Worsley/Watson)) and key Indian institutions notably IIT Delhi (Dutta/Pathak), NPL Delhi (Chand, Gupta), CSIR Hydrabad (Giribabu, Narayan), IISER Pune (Ogale), IIT Kanpur (Garg, Gupta). The research impact of scaleable and stable low cost metal mounted PV products will be supported by technology demonstration at five off grid village communities (each of up to 20000 people). The EPSRC JUICE consortium will support the systems integration and electrical storage elements to create real technology demonstrators using local manufacturing supply chains (Tata Cleantech Capital and Tata Trust). In addition to electrical infrastructure the SUNRISE partnership includes activity on gasification of farming/crop wastes (a major cause of the incredible pollution in Delhi in November 2016) and the SPECIFIC IKC will support the practical on site demonstration of photocatalytic water purification using a linked programme with the Gates' Foundation. A key driver for this project is not only demonstration of technology in real demonstration sites but the creation of a legacy of better Indian Industry/Institution collaboration through the creation of an Industrial Doctorate programme modelled on the success of the UK EngD programme started by EPSRC in 1992 and pioneered at Swansea.

The ABC will be one of two hubs funded through the Transforming Construction Industrial Challenge. ABC aims to: 'revolutionise the way the UK designs, constructs and operates buildings by realising the potential for the integration of advanced offsite manufacturing with state of the art digital design. This will include the incorporation and integration of energy generation, storage, and release technologies to create Active Buildings which substantially reduce both the operational costs of buildings and their demand on the UK energy infrastructure'. Our Vision is to enable energy resilient communities that are powered by the sun, share energy with transport and other buildings, whilst realising value for the UK by overcoming barriers and developing new business models with global potential. The Mission - ABC is a national centre of excellence and will catalyse a revolution in smart buildings and energy sharing. ABC will bring together energy, construction, government and research to create a dynamic ecosystem that identifies barriers and creates solutions for scale up and deployment of buildings and communities that are Active. ABC will prove scale, enable an industry and create the conditions for market adoption. Critical to this will be clustered demonstration facilities on a variety of building typologies and pipeline of several thousand buildings which are being considered by a diverse array of assembled supporting companies and organisations. We have already demonstrated that we can use buildings that are manufactured using the principles of car making to rapidly construct facilities that have facades that generate heat and electricity from the sun and include elements and new materials that store this energy (both electricity and heat) until we need it. Critically this enables buildings to be powered (electrically) and heated without any gas connection. In addition, our initial demonstrations have shown that the buildings can generate allot more energy than they use. Our 'Active Classroom' has generated over 1.6 times the energy used in its first full year and putting that in perspective the spare power would have driven one of our EVs for over 26,500 miles. Our aim then is to transform the way we think of buildings as consumers of power and requiring more infrastructure the more we build to a solution both to the requirements of occupancy and energy decarbonisation. One million homes would in essence require one large nuclear powerplant, however adoption of the new Active concept essentially delivers the homes and the powerplant at the same time. This is vitally important as we transition to electric cars which will be a major element of where excess power from buildings can be fed and with advanced new communication systems the fact that a car is stationary and by a building for almost 95% of its life we have potential for a huge mobile storage reserve. Construction also creates positive economic conditions. To frame the opportunity in relation to Active Homes, in a recent report by the UK Housebuilders Federation, the economic case for increasing home building is compelling. Each additional 10,000 units would support 43,000 jobs, increase economic output by £1.36bn, lead to £120m in tax recovery, £43.2m in local infrastructure and an increase in local economic spending by £320m. 10,000 Active homes would also add renewable energy capacity of ca 50MW including storage via EVs, thermal stores and internal batteries. Clearly this is only part of the story since there will also be tremendous value from non-residential buildings that will be showcased for education, factory and commercial properties as part of the delivery programme for ABC and these in many cases can form energy hubs for existing communities of more traditional buildings.

Most natural organisms show fascinating mechanical versatility when interacting with their environments. Stiffness tuning in nature is used as a powerful tool to combine the load carrying functionality of rigid structures with compliance and adaptability. A remarkable example of stiffness tuning can be seen in echinoderms, such as sea cucumbers, where the mechanical stiffness can change by a factor of 10 in less than 1s. Human-made structures are normally designed to meet a specific load carrying requirement. To add other functionalities, additional components are often required; these increase the total weight and cost of the structure and consequently cause limitations in performance, efficiency and safety. Therefore, embedding sensing, actuation and control within a structure is highly desirable. Inspired by stiffness tuning in natural organisms, various synthetic materials have been developed in recent years for active structural control. However, achieving significant stiffness reduction in a short time frame with minimum power requirements but without undermining the load carrying capacity of the structure remain as some of main challenges. In this proposal, we aim to tackle these challenges by exploiting recent advances in optoelectronics and nanotechnology to design, manufacture and evaluate a nano-structured interconnected metallic network embedded in a thermoplastic layer. This layer will be then employed, as an active interface, in a conventional multi-layered structure. Upon activation, it will provide rapid structural control and impact protection capabilities. We will use a combined experimental and numerical approach to investigate the electro-thermo-mechanical response of this interface. Understanding the main physical obstacles that limit the response time and the fundamental parameters controlling the stability and the failure of this interface under harsh electro-thermal loading will help us to better engineer this interface at the micro level to meet the fast response and low power requirements. This new understanding will accelerate the technology readiness level of active structural control technology to be used in future multi-functional and smart structures. This technology has a wide range of application in robotics, morphing and deployable structures, active damping and active impact protection. As a potential representative technology, we aim to employ this active interlayer in laminated glass windscreens for automotive vehicles. Application of this transparent active interface in windscreens will help protect vulnerable road users against head-related injuries and is believed to be a step change toward designing more pedestrian/cyclist-friendly vehicles. To motivate the development of this technology, the University of Surrey is partnering with Pilkington, a member of the NSG group, which is one of the world's largest manufactures of glass and glazing products for architectural, automotive and technical glass sectors to manufacture and test this active transparent interlayer for application in automotive windscreens.

Material architectures with pores on the 5 - 50 nm length scale offer distinct opportunities for chemo- and biosensing applications. Capillary condensation, i.e. the filling of pores with condensed liquid from the vapour phase, is highly dependent on the pore size and relative humidity. Efficient trapping of target analytes relates to a combination of adequate surface interaction and control over spatial confinement. The aim of this research proposal is to build porous materials with unprecedented functioning in humidity and biomedical sensing through the structural control offered by the use of block copolymer (BCP) co-assembly. BCPs are macromolecules that are composed of chemically dissimilar building blocks, which are linked by covalent bonds. Solvent evaporation leads to phase separation into nanoscale morphologies, which can be controlled by the molecular design of the BCPs. In a co-assembly approach, BCPs are used as sacrificial host to structure direct inorganic guest material. After structure formation, the organic material is removed to reveal a porous inorganic network. Conceptually, this approach allows to systematically vary and control key parameters of porous thin films, such as porosity, pore size and dispersity as well as the pore architecture, by modifications to the molecular building blocks and processing conditions. In the course of the proposed study, parameters that govern the pore size and dispersity will be elucidated and general effectiveness of BCP-derived porous materials evaluated on two different sensing platforms, namely humidity and biomedical sensing. In humidity sensing, the fabrication of transparent material architectures will be pursued that allow accurate determination over the full humidity range via capacitative means, offering an integrated route to responsive glazing components for automotive and building applications. Findings will be implemented in a windscreen prototype with responsive anti-fogging control. In the light of the gradual extinction of the internal combustion engine towards electrified mobility where heat is no longer abundant and thus a significant burden to the energy consumption, such technology will offer widespread impact. For biomedical sensing, the trapping of target analytes in porous networks will be studied for a number of candidates whose quantification is important in therapy, e.g. viruses, therapeutic antibodies, exosomes or microRNA. Applicability of effective trapping and the envisioned superior pore size control will be implemented in novel types of biosensors that allow detection by changes in electrochemical currents associated to a blockage of the pores. Successful proof-of-principle will stimulate the development of low-cost handheld diagnostic devices in point-of-care applications to improve therapeutic outcomes at minimal side-effects.