The success of modern technology is dependent on the availability of a large number of materials with different properties. Historically, this has led to a reliance on natural materials for delivering a desired function, some of which are scarce or have non-ideal properties. Over the past 20 years, extensive laboratory studies have demonstrated low-dimensional materials as an exciting group of advanced materials that can provide solutions to many of the major challenges society faces, including energy storage and generation, resource sustainability, pollution remediation, and health care. Their extraordinary material properties emerge when one or more of their dimensions comprise of only a few atomic or molecular layers. Two-dimensional materials such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, and MXenes, for example, are atomically thin materials with an enormous range of physicochemical properties. They can be exfoliated from bulk crystals to engineer nanosheets with custom properties that are dependent on their thickness (such as direct band gaps). Despite their advantages and exciting prospects, one major restriction limiting their integration within our technologies is scalable, controllable manufacturing of high quality materials. Current processes produce materials with uncontrolled nanosheet morphologies, leading to materials that are not optimised for end-user applications. This is a universal issue for all high-volume, top-down manufacturing approaches, and leads to an unnecessary use of resources to compensate for the deficiency in material quality. A compounding issue is the poor yield often obtained in manufacturing processes (~1%wt). The most environmentally sustainable exfoliation processes are mechano-chemical, avoiding the use of toxic oxidising agents by producing materials using mechanical force (e.g. shear exfoliation). While this is admirable, up to 99% of the feedstock material does not get converted into a valuable low- dimensional material, and instead this ends up as waste. This introduces environmental problems, mineral under-usage, and resource security concerns for the UK given many raw materials are located in other geographical regions. The aim of this project is to address these issues by creating a self-driven manufacturing solution that produces high quality materials with custom properties on-demand, while simultaneously embedding circular economy principles for reusing the vast quantities of feedstock that end up as waste from these manufacturing systems. Underpinned by interdisciplinary research spanning fluid dynamics, materials science, engineering, and applied data science, a transformative manufacturing solution will be developed that significantly departs from the state-of-the-art. It will be scalable and process-agnostic, manufacturing custom materials from all types of liquid-exfoliation processes (chemical, mechanical, electrochemical) and easily transferrable into a rapidly growing UK industry. This will open up the route for sustainable industrial scale manufacturing and facilitate the large-scale growth of novel technologies and functional devices that will lead to a more sustainable society.

Space heating currently accounts for 25% of the UK's energy consumption and 17% of its carbon emissions. The effective and efficient recovery, storage, and reuse of waste heat, together with renewable energy, play indispensable roles in decarbonisation of heating in buildings. The thermochemical energy storage materials possess the highest volumetric energy density comparing to phase change and sensible heat storage materials. However, the design and manufacture of thermochemical energy storage materials are still facing the challenges of high cost, low sustainability, and limited heating power. There also lacks fundamental understandings of the properties of materials that control the cyclic energy storage performances and structural stabilities. These have brought significant challenges to optimisation and implementation of the thermochemical energy storage techniques for domestic application. This project adopts novel research approaches for civil engineering materials to tackle these standing challenges faced by developing thermochemical energy storage materials. Versatile high-performance heat battery materials will be developed from sustainable low-cost civil engineering material geopolymers. Lightweight geopolymer composite materials with enhanced heat and mass transport properties and thermochemical energy storage capacity will be developed through green synthesis routes. The first structural stability assessment model for predicting the service cycle life of heat battery materials will be proposed from the extended chemo-mechanical salt damage model for inorganic porous building materials. The materials fabrication technology and fundamental understanding of the degradation mechanism developed in this project will be transferable to versatile "salt-in-matrix" TCES composites. The outcomes developed from this project will drastically improve the sustainability and resilience of thermal energy storage technologies, for decarbonisation of heating in existing and new-built buildings.

The proposed CDT will address the UK's need for a pipeline of highly skilled scientists and engineers who will be able to secure the country's position as the global leader in the science and technology of two-dimensional materials (2DMs). Having started with the discovery of graphene at the University of Manchester, this research field now encompasses a vast number of 2DMs, 2DM-based devices, composites, inks, and complex heterostructures with designer properties. Numerous proposals for applications have emerged from research groups worldwide, some of them already picked up and being developed by big established companies and a large number of start-ups (30+ spin-outs just from the two partner universities, Manchester and Cambridge). Many of the ideas put forward require further research and validation and many more are expected to emerge, thanks to the unique properties of this new class of advanced materials and the ability to use modelling to predict new useful combinations of 2DMs or design conditions that bring about new properties. The CDT will support and enable new avenues of research and the development of 2DM-based technologies and work with industry partners to accelerate lab-to-market development of products and processes that leverage the exceptional properties of 2DMs. 2DMoT CDT will be an important part of graphene and 2D Materials eco-system centred on the Manchester and Cambridge innovation networks. It will contribute to the plans by the local authorities, in particular, of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, to pilot Manufacturing Innovation Networks focused on graphene & nanomaterials, coatings and technical textiles. Industrial co-supervision of research projects will accelerate realisation of new products and technologies enabled by 2DMs, which is key to competitiveness. The CDT will implement a new approach to PhD research training by incorporating individual research projects into several overarching, multidisciplinary research missions with 2-3 CDT students a year joining each research mission, either at Manchester or Cambridge, and gradually forming 8-10 researcher teams incorporating CDT students at different stages of their PhD and involving several research groups with complementary expertise, working collaboratively and sharing ideas and knowledge. All students will have opportunities to shape their own projects and overall research missions, creating an inclusive environment, ideal for peer-to-peer learning and innovation. A 6-months-long formal taught programme at the start of PhD will be complemented by further advanced skills training during the research phase, transferrable skills training and research schools and workshops organised jointly with leading international research centres and the CDT business partners. Environmental sustainability of the developed products and technologies will be a focal point of the CDT programme, with specialist training and considerations of sustainability embedded in all research missions. Training in innovation and commercialization of research, project management, responsible research and innovation, and dealing with the media will be mandatory for all CDT students. To ensure that the benefits of CDT training are available to a wider group of PhD researchers, a range of CDT events - residential conferences, seminars, research workshops, commercialisation training - as well as some of the courses, will be open to non-CDT students whose research interests are aligned with the CDT research missions. Outreach events will form an important part of CDT activities, in particular participation in Science festivals, British Science weeks, Bluedot, Science X, with exhibits showcasing the science of 2DMs and their developing applications.