Completed Physics & Astronomy Chemistry

EPSRC Core Equipment Award 2024 - University of Oxford

Funder EPSRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation
Funding £1.4M
Period Dec 2024 — Jun 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Oxford University is upgrading four pieces of shared scientific equipment that will be used by dozens of research groups across engineering and physical sciences. The equipment—a precession electron diffraction system, a micro X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, an ultra-high-speed imaging system, and a high-resolution X-ray powder diffractometer—each serves a specific purpose. The diffraction system helps researchers understand the atomic structure of materials being developed for the energy transition, such as better battery components or lighter structural alloys. The spectrometer identifies the elemental composition of advanced materials, which is critical for quality control in manufacturing. The high-speed camera captures events that happen in millionths of a second, useful for studying combustion, explosions, or fast chemical reactions. The diffractometer analyses powders and thin films, supporting work on pharmaceuticals, catalysts, and coatings. If the upgrade succeeds, researchers across Oxford will be able to run experiments faster and with higher precision than current equipment allows. This directly supports early-career researchers and doctoral students who rely on shared instruments for their projects. The award does not fund a single breakthrough—it maintains the infrastructure that makes many small advances possible across materials science, chemistry, and engineering.

View original technical description
This is a proposal for investment to support a wide range of researchers and fields of research across UoO’s engineering and physical sciences (EPS) remit through the upgrade of existing multi-user equipment. It will support UoO's strategic goals of achieving enduring research excellence, and attracting and developing the best researchers at all career levels. Enabling these goals is the provision of cutting-edge research infrastructure aligning with EPSRC’s “World-Class Labs” ecosystem. The requested equipment items fulfil the call objectives of "underpinning multi-user equipment", "invest to save" and "capital investment with substantial and demonstrable, but not exclusive, benefit to early career researchers and doctoral training activities that they are involved in". Oversight and governance of the Core Equipment award is provided by the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division. The project co-leads for each requested item will be responsible for regular reporting to MPLS on progress against objectives. The requested equipment items are: Precession Electron Diffraction System, structuring materials for the energy transition Micro X-ray fluorescence spectrometer for compositional analysis of advanced materials Ultra High-Speed Imaging for Next Generation Diagnostics High resolution X-ray powder diffractometer with high capacity, 2D small angle X-ray scattering and 2D grazing incidence capability

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Researchers

Alfonso Castrejon-Pita (Co-Investigator)Andrew Boothroyd (Co-Investigator)James Naismith (Principal Investigator)Katharina Marquardt (Co-Investigator)

Related Research

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EPSRC Core Equipment Award 2020 - University of Oxford
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Original classification

Unknown

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