Soft Processing to Enable the Low Impact, Sustainable Manufacture of Inorganic Materials and Advanced Inorganic Semiconductor Composites

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)
Renewable Energy Sources(Solar Energy, Photovoltaics)
Not Energy Related

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Chemistry)
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor P O'Brien
Chemistry
University of Manchester

Dr D Lewis
Materials
University of Manchester

Standard

EPSRC

29 March 2018

31 March 2022

48 months

£474,388

Materials sciences

North West; North West

NC : Engineering

Professor P O'Brien, Chemistry, University of Manchester
Dr D Lewis, Materials, University of Manchester

Professor SG Yeates, Chemistry, University of Manchester

The development and large scale manufacture of advanced materials is one of the 'eight great technologies' that have been highlighted by the British Government that should be pursued to drive economic growth. The production of advanced composites with defined optical and electronic properties is a key area of research in this remit. The incorporation of semiconductor materials into host materials such as paper, plastics, polymers and textiles is of interest for the production of printed and wearable smart technology for personal energy generation or for health monitoring. However, despite research efforts in this area, many of the current pathways to produce advanced materials, for example semiconductors, require high temperature processing steps that limit the host matrix that can be used, or require high vacuum which limits scalability.In this proposal we directly address this manufacturing limitation by using soft processing (i.e. low temperature <200 C, ambient pressure) to enable the potentially scalable production of a range of metal sulfide semiconductor polymer composites. We will show that our processing route is suitable for producing a range of binary, tertiary and quaternary metal sulfide polymer composities in a range of dimensionalities (i.e. 1D, 2D 3D), controlled by judicious choice of processing route. Finally, we will demonstrate how the manufacturing route we propose is compatible with laser printing, and will produce the world's first example of a Maxwell colour triangle for the Cu/Zn/Sn sulfide system.Successful outcomes will be in the development of new soft processing pathways for a range of advanced semiconductor composites, which could lessen the economic and environmental impact of material manufacture for future generations. The manufacturing processes that we are proposing allow the design and realisation of a suite of new products with as yet unknown, but potentially advantageous, properties. Additionally, the advent of laser printing as a manufacturing route enabled by the research proposed here would provide a significant step change in the way that these materials can be processed and manufactured allowing high throughput printing of semiconductor arrays on inexpensive, light and flexible substrates such as paper or acetates for applications such as building integrated PV, personal energy generation or wearable sensors.

13/02/19