Swansea University is the host for the EPSRC/TSB funded Innovation and Knowledge centre, the Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings (SPECIFIC). The SPECIFIC IKC has ambitious targets to create a new billion pound industry sector built on the principle of buildings as power-stations. The core collaborative partners include leading UK research institutes (e.g. ICL and Bath Universities) and internationally leading industry groups (e.g. Tata, BASF and Pilkington). Critically, the IKC is established after 9 months of operation in a purpose designed facility including state of the art labs and scale up facilities (a pilot production line) with industry and academic team members working together in a true open innovation model. Having established the centre and the core partnerships it is clear that to deliver the ambitious targets and create the new UK lead industry in functionally coated construction products the key final ingredient is the people. Whilst the existing team funded by EPSRC, TSB, the University and Industry is quite small (19 people in totality) the IKC is supported by a larger cohort of research students (currently 32 funded largely through ESF sources). It is this critical mass of young, enthusiastic, open minded individuals that catalyses the atmosphere and initial successes of the IKC. It is the aim for COATED that we can build on this initial momentum and support three entries of seven EngD students onto a new EngD programme based entirely on functional coatings. We have secured the support of the Welsh European funding office (WEFO) and Swansea University for one third of the funds. Our industry partners have committed one third of the funds and as such we feel the proposal represents good economic value to EPSRC. This EPSRC funding will be critical in enabling research partnerships with universities outside Wales (such as ICL, Bath and Oxford) and with international companies with a UK footprint who are not based in the Principality. In addition, these research engineers upon graduation will form a critical pillar of a knowledge transfer mechanism into the new industry sector. This proposal builds on the long term innovative and successful EngD programmes run at Swansea on Steel Technology introducing a new dimension of UK wide collaboration and with a clear focus on value creation for the UK economy. COATED represents an important expansion of EngD activity at Swansea and underpins the success of the IKC. The ambitions of the SPECIFIC IKC to deliver new technology, jobs and wealth creation can only be realised with the mix of experienced Technology Transfer Fellows, engaged industry and academic partners (provided through the IKC) and a continued supply of open minded enthusiastic researchers that COATED can offer. A key new development will be the engagement with Oxford, Bath and Imperial at EngD level as this will bring cluster activity within those institutions where currently SPECIFIC has a single postdoctoral researcher. In addition, the EPSRC funding will allow for collaboration with companies across the UK and with multinational partners with a UK footprint. A key output from COATED alongside the technological and scientific innovations will be the people who will form part of the emerging new industry creating buildings that are power-stations. The alignment of Welsh Government, Industry and EPSRC that this programme offers will deliver these benefits with minimal financial contribution and could be an important model for how the funding organisations can work successfully together in the future to deliver value to the UK economy.

The UK metal casting industry is a key player in the global market. It adds 2.6bn/year to the UK economy, employs directly around 30,000 people and produces 1.14 billion tons of metal castings, of which 37% is for direct export (Source: CMF, UK). It underpins the competitive position of every sector of UK manufacturing across automotive, aerospace, defence, energy and general engineering. However, its 500 companies are mainly SMEs, who are often not in a position to undertake the highest quality R&D necessary for them to remain competitive in global markets. The current EPSRC IMRC portfolio does not cover this important research area nor does it address this clear, compelling business need. We propose to establish IMRC-LiME, a 3-way centre of excellence for solidification research, to fill this distinctive and clear gap in the IMRC portfolio. IMRC-LiME will build on the strong metal casting centres already established at Brunel, Oxford and Birmingham Universities and their internationally leading capabilities and expertise to undertake both fundamental and applied solidification research in close collaborations with key industrial partners across the supply chain. It will support and provide opportunities for the UK metal casting industry and its customers to move up the value chain and to improve their business competitiveness. The main research theme of IMRC-LiME is liquid metal engineering, which is defined as the treatment of liquid metals by either chemical or physical means for the purpose of enhancing heterogeneous nucleation through manipulation of the chemical and physical nature of both endogenous (naturally occurring) and exogenous (externally added) nucleating particles prior to solidification processing. A prime aim of liquid metal engineering is to produce solidified metallic materials with fine and uniform microstructure, uniform composition, minimised casting defects and hence enhanced engineering performance. Our fundamental (platform) research theme will be centred on understanding the nucleation process and developing generic techniques for nucleation control; our user-led research theme will be focused on improving casting quality through liquid metal engineering prior to various casting processes. The initial focus will be mainly on light metals with expansion in the long term to a wide range of structural metals and alloys, to eventually include aluminium, magnesium, titanium, nickel, steel and copper. In the long-term IMRC-LiME will deliver: 1) A nucleation-centred solidification science, that represents a fundamental move away from the traditional growth-focused science of solidification. 2) A portfolio of innovative solidification processing technologies, that are capable of providing high performance metallic materials with little need for solid state deformation processing, representing a paradigm shift from the current solid state deformation based materials processing to a solidification centred materials engineering. 3) An optimised metallurgical industry, in which the demand for metallic materials can be met by an efficient circulation of existing metallic materials through innovative technologies for reuse, remanufacture, direct recycling and chemical conversion with limited additions of primary metal to sustain the circulation loop. This will lead to a substantial conservation of natural resources, a reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emissions while meeting the demand for metallic materials for economic growth and wealth creation.

This proposal to modernise existing equipment and to establish new, leading research facilities in the field of materials characterisation comprises two "bundles" of equipment. The first comprises a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and an X-Ray Tomographic Microscope. Advanced characterisation is only possible with state-of-the art imaging; this equipment will link engineering at the macro-scale with fundamental scientific discoveries at the nano-scale. There are clear synergies with research being undertaken at the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre, which is backed by £10M funding from EPSRC and Technology Strategy Board/Innovate UK. The proposed equipment underpins an atoms to applications approach to science and engineering and will be housed in a purpose-built scientific imaging facility with bespoke climatic control and vibration free floors. This facility is already under construction and will permit an emphasis on correlative microscopy spanning two, three and four dimensions, combining multiple scales and different forms of advanced microanalysis, to provide new insight and connect cutting-edge imaging and analysis techniques. The facility's ex- and in-situ mechanical testing and multi-dimension/scale imaging modalities will be a 'beamline-bridge' for advancing lab-based investigations to STFC Diamond Light Source/ISIS, increasing the number and diversity of academic/industrial take-up of central strategic RCUK facilities. The second bundle is aligned to the Institute of Structural Materials (ISM), which supports a pool of highly experienced post-doctoral research officers and support staff, and significant rolling research funding including the Rolls-Royce/EPSRC Strategic Partnership, which is designed to extend the capability of existing high temperature metallic systems and develop novel alloys for potential use within a twenty-year horizon (the "Vision 20" materials). ISM is globally recognised as a centre of excellence for mechanical characterisation of Structural Materials, and has ~£700k PA rolling EPSRC research funding secured to 2019. This proposal seeks to refresh experimental equipment which will be housed in a bespoke £14M research and testing building also under construction as part of the University's £450M campus development programme. The equipment to be refreshed includes: *Test frame for use in corrosion-fatigue environment *Thermo-mechanical fatigue test facility *Gleeble thermo-mechanical simulator *Component lifing under strain control *High frequency servo-hydraulic test facility *High temperature vacuum crack propagation facilities The proposal also seeks funding for a new, desktop tensile testing facility which will provide a bridge between theoretical teaching and full scale mechanical testing. The proposal benefits from significant additional investment from the Welsh European Funding Office, Welsh Government National Research Networks and Ser Cymru, and Swansea University; support from industrial users; partnership with STFC; an extensive network of academic collaborators, and the infrastructure of the University's new Science and Innovation Campus, scheduled to open in September 2015.