A £2.5 million funding will fund a new network to further metamaterials research, led by a University of Warwick researcher.
Image Credit: University of Warwick
Metamaterials are incredibly promising. These are synthetic three-dimensional structures made of a minimum of two different materials. Metamaterials possess properties that surpass those of the constituent materials due to this combination and their structural design. These characteristics could be thermal, chemical, mechanical/structural, magnetic, acoustic, or electromagnetic.
In the digital era, metamaterials have the potential to revolutionize the economy by addressing societal issues through their manufacturing contributions in the fields of sustainability, healthcare, communications, defense and security, computation techniques, and the space and aviation industries.
Currently, 13 institutions and five organizations will take the lead in boosting the UK’s capabilities in developing unique and revolutionary metamaterials, owing to funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a division of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
The UK Metamaterials NetworkPlus will continue the work of the UK Metamaterials Network, founded in 2021. It will be co-led by Dr. Claire Dancer, Reader, WMG at The University of Warwick, and Professor Alastair Hibbins, Director of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Metamaterial Research and Innovation, as well as a team of co-project leads from throughout the UK.
The EPSRC grant will support the development of ground-breaking discoveries and will last for more than four years, starting on March 1st, 2024. It will strengthen the skills pipeline in the UK and propel the development of high-value products and technology for the next generation.
Warwick will take the lead in investigating manufacturing challenges related to metamaterials, including co-processing difficult material combinations and figuring out how to produce metamaterials at a larger scale using currently non-scalable processes. This will build on the university’s extensive experience in the materials manufacturing industry and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult activities in place at WMG.
We are really excited by this additional funding from EPSRC. Not only are we now able to continue supporting our community, but we are now going to be able to offer pump-prime funding for a number of priority projects that are strategically important to us.
Dr. Claire Dancer, Reader, WMG, University of Warwick
Dr. Dancer continued, “That is across fundamental science, manufacturing, and industrially relevant research – ultimately strengthening the role that metamaterials play in the UK’s science and technology portfolio, driving further investment into our area, and ensuring the UK benefits from our academic excellence on the global stage.”
Professor Alastair Hibbins, project lead of the NetworkPlus, and Director of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Metamaterial Research and Innovation added, “The scope of metamaterials is huge; metamaterials as a concept provides the opportunities to control information and energy through careful structuring of conventional materials. But of course, ‘information’ and ‘energy’ are very general terms and cover an enormous range of devices; what we really mean is heat, fluid-flow, light, vibration, sound, radar, relevant to technologies such as communication, computing, electronics, health, sustainability, and defence.”
Hibbins said, “This breadth in science and application has meant that the excellence in our academic community has been incredibly diverse but not joined-up. For the last few years, Dr Claire Dancer from WMG at the University of Warwick, and I have co-led the Network, and with the funding and support from EPSRC and The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), we have been working incredibly hard to forge a new UK ecosystem for metamaterials where we work together to support each other, and drive work into areas that require multidisciplinary approaches to solve global challenges.”
Enhancing UK research in this crucial technology domain is the aim of the UK Metamaterials NetworkPlus. To expedite the advancement of the UK’s technical agenda, it will convene specialists from academia, business, and government. Maintaining and expanding the UK’s leadership in discovery research on the international scene depends on it.
The NetworkPlus will be officially launched during the Metamaterials UK Conference and Forum on May 19th–23rd, 2024.