NOWNANO DTC: A North West Nanoscience Doctoral Training Centre

Future technological and scientific advances will be built on our ability to fabricate, characterise, address, model and manipulate physical structures at the nanoscale. Technologies will exploit phenomena that arise as classical physics is superseded by quantum behaviour in such structures. Progress will depend on scientists, engineers and clinicians working closely together in interdisciplinary teams, using theory derived from physics, molecular manipulation skills from chemistry, nanotechnology design and lithographic techniques from the engineering disciplines and applying them to the storage and transmission of information, a range of sensors and the bottom-up control over biomedical response. The NOWNANO-DTC will train students in a multidisciplinary centre, concentrating on the broad fundamentals of nanoscience and technology prior to the choice of a cross-disciplinary PhD project focussing on the scientific and technological advances required and covering two major research directions:A. From nanoscience through electronics to information technology: Nanoscience and nanotechnologies have the potential to revolutionise society through step changes in electronic materials, computing, optics and the use of physical and chemical understanding to create innovative self-assembled systems. Already today the dimensions of electronic device components and elements of data storage and processing are in the nanoscale realm, e.g., high end processors have line widths of 45 nm with data bits stored on 50 x 50 nm. Further miniaturization, as well the reduction in the demand for materials, power consumption, and life-cycle costs requires an interdisciplinary understanding of the fundamental properties and processes, as well as developing new technologies. These new demands will be addressed by NOWNANO-DTC where the students will acquire expertise in fabrication, measurement and theoretical understanding of matter at the nanoscale. In particular, they will learn nanofabrication techniques, as well as new soft matter approaches, and develop hybrid structures based on combinations of traditional and new materials such as graphene, nanoparticles and molecular systems. These will be complemented by development of theoretical models which will then be used to describe the physics of carrier dynamics and other properties of nano-scale devices, e.g., devices operating at THz frequencies, opto-electronic and spintronic devices, hardware for quantum information processing and many others. B. Nanoscience in medicine: the potential to transform medicine to become more individualised and hence safer lies behind the use of nanotechnology. Physical nanoscience could provide bioresponsiveness, higher detection capabilities, connectivity to advances in the digital world and can address security issues (counterfeiting, privacy). Specifically, our students will work to produce individualised and safer medicines: predominantly in the perspective of the diagnosis and treatment of (auto)inflammatory diseases and solid tumours, nano-structured materials will allow biologically triggered release of drugs and/or accurate mapping of biological variables e.g. combining single molecule analysis with fluidodynamics of tissues, encompassing also toxicology and the impact of nanomaterials on public health.