The Transforming the Foundation Industries Challenge has set out the background of the six foundation industries; cement, ceramics, chemicals, glass, metals and paper, which produce 28 Mt pa (75% of all materials in our economy) with a value of £52Bn but also create 10% of UK CO2 emissions. These materials industries are the root of all supply chains providing fundamental products into the industrial sector, often in vertically-integrated fashion. They have a number of common factors: they are water, resource and energy-intensive, often needing high temperature processing; they share processes such as grinding, heating and cooling; they produce high-volume, often pernicious waste streams, including heat; and they have low profit margins, making them vulnerable to energy cost changes and to foreign competition. Our Vision is to build a proactive, multidisciplinary research and practice driven Research and Innovation Hub that optimises the flows of all resources within and between the FIs. The Hub will work with communities where the industries are located to assist the UK in achieving its Net Zero 2050 targets, and transform these industries into modern manufactories which are non-polluting, resource efficient and attractive places to be employed. TransFIRe is a consortium of 20 investigators from 12 institutions, 49 companies and 14 NGO and government organisations related to the sectors, with expertise across the FIs as well as energy mapping, life cycle and sustainability, industrial symbiosis, computer science, AI and digital manufacturing, management, social science and technology transfer. TransFIRe will initially focus on three major challenges: 1 Transferring best practice - applying "Gentani": Across the FIs there are many processes that are similar, e.g. comminution, granulation, drying, cooling, heat exchange, materials transportation and handling. Using the philosophy Gentani (minimum resource needed to carry out a process) this research would benchmark and identify best practices considering resource efficiencies (energy, water etc.) and environmental impacts (dust, emissions etc.) across sectors and share information horizontally. 2 Where there's muck there's brass - creating new materials and process opportunities. Key to the transformation of our Foundation Industries will be development of smart, new materials and processes that enable cheaper, lower-energy and lower-carbon products. Through supporting a combination of fundamental research and focused technology development, the Hub will directly address these needs. For example, all sectors have material waste streams that could be used as raw materials for other sectors in the industrial landscape with little or no further processing. There is great potential to add more value by "upcycling" waste by further processes to develop new materials and alternative by-products from innovative processing technologies with less environmental impact. This requires novel industrial symbioses and relationships, sustainable and circular business models and governance arrangements. 3 Working with communities - co-development of new business and social enterprises. Large volumes of warm air and water are produced across the sectors, providing opportunities for low grade energy capture. Collaboratively with communities around FIs, we will identify the potential for co-located initiatives (district heating, market gardening etc.). This research will highlight issues of equality, diversity and inclusiveness, investigating the potential from societal, environmental, technical, business and governance perspectives. Added value to the project comes from the £3.5 M in-kind support of materials and equipment and use of manufacturing sites for real-life testing as well as a number of linked and aligned PhDs/EngDs from HEIs and partners This in-kind support will offer even greater return on investment and strongly embed the findings and operationalise them within the sector.

This program is about using nanostructured materials to address key areas in energy related applications. This proposal will deliver world class materials science through ambitious thin and thick film development and analysis and the proposal targets the EPSRC strategic areas Energy and Nanoscience through nanoengineering. The programme grant will provide the opportunity to integrate three well established research areas that currently operate independently of each other and will establish a new consortium of activities. Collectively they offer the essential ingredients to move this particular field forward. The planned program of work is timely because of the convergence of modelling capability, precision multilayer oxide growth expertise and nanofabrication facilities. The overall vision for the Programme Grant is focussed on Energy. Within the Programme we aim to find means of reducing energy consumption for example by using electro and magnetocaloric means of cooling; generating energy by use of nanoscale rectifying antennas and finally storing energy by photocatalytic splitting of hydrogen from water. Our program is divided into two themed areas:1) Nanostructured oxides for Energy Efficient Refrigeration with 2 project areasElectrocaloricsMagnetocalorics2) Nanostructured oxides for energy production and storage with 2 project areasSolar HarvestingPhotocatalysisThis research will enable :- The development of new materials, new material architectures and new device concepts for energy refrigeration and energy harvesting. The synergy across a range of programs particularly the underpinning activities of materials theory, modelling and characterisation will move these important fields closer to application.- The research will also enable a new forum to be established, with representation from UK and European scientists and industrialists so that broad discussions can be held to enable moving these fields forward. We place a significant emphasis on training, outreach and knowledge transfer.The research challenges that need to be addressed are:- Designing physical systems that are close to an instability so that small external perturbations from magnetic or electric fields, optical or thermal excitation will tip the system into a new ground state- Optimising control over (strain, defects, doping inhomogeneity, disorder) and first layer effects in thin film oxides (with thicknesses of the order of 10nm or less) so that we can develop the capability to tune the band gap of the oxide using directed modelling and targeted growth control.

The development of new materials and new devices / products based upon these materials is absolutely critical to the economic development of our society. One critical aspect of the development of new materials is the ability to analyse the materials and thus determine their properties. Indeed at the very heart of the philosophy of the materials discipline is the relationship between the microstructure and the properties of the materials. The core idea is that through processing one can control the microstructure and thus the properties. Materials characterisation tells us how succesful we have been at changing the microstructure and so is essential in process development. It also tells us what has gone wrong when materials or devices based upon them fail, i.e. it is used in troubleshooting. There are a vast array of advanced materials characterisation techniques available these days and it is very challenging to know the best technique or combination of techniques to use to answer specific research problems. There is a need, therefore, to train research scientists who are expert in the use of certain techniques but also have a broader in-depth understanding of the plethora of techniques that potentially could be used. At the moment there is a skills gap in this area and we will plug that gap with this CDT in advanced characterisation of materials that brings together experts in advanced materials characterisation from two of the worlds top universities. The students will also spend some time (at least 12 weeks) in industry or at an overseas univeristy receiving context specific training. The unique vision brought by this research training programme, therefore, is that our students will have a knowledge of materials characterisation that goes beyond narrow expertise in one or two experimental techniques, or a general overview of many, and instead cuts to the heart of what it means to be a leading experimentalist; with an inherent understanding of the nature of a scientific problem, the fundamental principles and intellectual tools required to address the problem, the technical knowledge and craft to apply the most appropriate experimental technique to obtain the necessary information and the critical and analytical skill to extract the solution from the data. The vision will be realised by exploiting the unique experimental infrastructure provided by UCL and ICL. The first year will be an MRes structure with the entire cohort receiving laboratory based practical training in techniques ubiquitous to modern day materials characterisation such as vacuum technology, scanning probe microscopy, optical characterisation techniques and clean-room processing. Key analytical skills will be taught such as data handling, manipulation and interpretation, practiced on real data, exploiting facilities such as Imperials ToF-SIMS analysis suite and UCL chemistry's material modelling user interface. We will engage with industry to generate genuine problem-based characterisation case studies so that elements of the course will be founded on problem based learning. Visiting professors such as Mark Dowsett (Warwick University) and Hidde Brongersma(Calipso BV) will contribute to the training experience and some external courses will be used for specialist training, for example at ISIS. Traditional lectures will be limited in number with every sub-topic leading into an interactive problem class run by one of our extensive number of industry partners. In our CDT ACM the thrill of solving class problems together and of competing in team-based experimental challenges will produce a highly engaged, critically minded, close-knit team of students.