A new centre will train 70 PhD students over four years to master the advanced techniques needed to see exactly how materials behave while they are working—inside a battery as it charges, for instance, or within a turbine blade under extreme heat. Materials characterisation—the science of measuring a material’s structure and chemistry—has become far more complex. Industry needs to understand how materials evolve in real time, across scales from nanometres to centimetres, and under harsh conditions. Current techniques often capture only static snapshots or single length scales, leaving critical gaps in knowledge. This centre addresses that gap by training a generation of researchers who can combine multiple characterisation methods and interpret the results. If successful, the centre will supply UK manufacturing, energy, and healthcare sectors with experts who can solve real-world materials problems—improving battery lifetimes, making lighter aircraft components, or developing better medical implants. Students will also gain skills in data science, ethics, and communication, and will work directly with industry partners and national facilities such as Diamond Light Source. The result is a workforce equipped to turn fundamental understanding into industrial advantage.
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Materials characterisation is critical to the understanding of key processes in a range of functional and structural materials that have applications across several industrial sectors. These sectors include strategic priorities such as discovery of functional materials, energy storage and conversion and materials manufacturing, and healthcare. Materials characterisation is increasing in complexity, driven by a need to understand how materials properties evolve in operando, over their full lifetimes and over all levels of their hierarchy to predict their ultimate performance. The new generation of materials characterisation techniques will require: 1. Greater spatial and chemical resolution; 2. Correlated information that bridges nano- and centimeter -length scales, to relate the nanoscale chemistry and structure of interest to their intrinsically multi-scale surroundings, and 3. Temporal information about the kinetics of materials behaviour in extreme environments. The CDT will train students in a range of complementary techniques, ensuring that they have the breadth and depth of knowledge to make informed choices when considering key characterisation challenges. Our CDT will use an integrated training approach, to ensure that the technical content is well aligned with the research objectives of each student. This training in specific research needs will be informed by our industry partners and will reflect the suite of research projects that the students will undertake. Our portfolio of research projects will provide an innovative and ambitious research and training experience that will enhance the UK's long-term capabilities across high value industrial sectors. Additionally, our students will receive training in a range of topics that will support their research progress including in science communication, research ethics, career development planning and data science. These additional courses will be distributed throughout the 4-year PhD programme and will ensure that a cohesive training plan is in place for each student, supported by cohort mentors. Each student graduating from the CDT-ACM will leave will a through understanding of the key challenges presented by materials characterisation problems, and have the tools to provide creative solutions to these. They will have first hand experience of collaborating with industry partners and will be well placed to address the strategic needs of the UK Industrial Strategy. Our training will be developed in collaboration with leading partner organisations, and include international collaboration with the AMBER centre, a Science Foundation Ireland centre, as well as national facilities such as Diamond Light Source. Innovative on-line and remote instrument access will be developed that will enable both UK and Irish cohorts to interact seamlessly. Industry partners will be closely involved in designing and delivering training activities including at summer schools, and will include entrepreneurship activities. Overall the 70 students that will be trained over the lifetime of the CDT will receive excellent tuition and research training at two world leading institutions with unique characterisation abilities.
Alexandra Porter (Co-Investigator)Camille Petit (Co-Investigator)Christopher Howard (Co-Investigator)Dorothy Duffy (Co-Investigator)Geoffrey Thornton (Co-Investigator)Ifan Stephens (Co-Investigator)Neil Curson (Co-Investigator)
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