Processing of Advanced Materials

Welcome to the research group page for Patrick Grant, Cookson Professor of Materials at Oxford University. Research activities are focused on the link between heat and mass flow during manufacturing processes, and the resulting material microstructure and properties. Many projects are concerned with solidification behaviour, and/or the use of liquid metal, ceramic or polymer droplet sprays to create unusual materials. The group works closely with industry and has many specialised synthesis and fabrication facilities, most of which are based at Oxford University's Begbroke Science Park, 5 miles north of Oxford - click here for a virtual tour. A new 350sqm Advanced Processing Laboratory at Begbroke was completed in June 2006 and is now the hub for the group's research, linking with other universities and companies in the UK and around the world. Patrick is also the Executive Director of those elements within the TSB's Materials Knowledge Transfer Network concerned with transport and sustainability.

Much of the group's work involves major collaborations with other universities and industry.

The group, along with Professor Jong Min Kim in the Department of Engineering Science have been awarded a three year research contract worth approximately US$1.5m over three years by Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) to investigate flexible energy storage and generation systems.

Prof Kim, Principal Investigator and lead for the flexible energy generation, device design, integration and testing said: “This research will be based on a new concept of flexible energy generation/storage for the next generation of mobile devices”. The PAM group will lead the research on the manufacture and characterisation of flexible energy storage, materials and sub-systems using recent developments in carbon and other nano-materials. The research will also involve close collaboration with Professor Han Soo Kim at Hanyang University in South Korea, who is an expert in energy storage devices. The final stages of the research will involve translating the work to collaborating industries.

The PAM Group is involved in EPSRC Programme Grant Materials for Fission and Fusion Power (MFFP). The research focuses on gaining a thorough understanding, at the microstructural level, of key structural integrity issues which underpin development and application of alloys for high-flux, high-temperature neutron environments. We are researching the manufacture oxide dispersion strengthened steels.

The PAM Group is one of the core partners of the new EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacture in Liquid Metal Engineering - LiME, involving Brunel and Birmingham Universities, and industrial partners. Click here to find out more about this major project to reduce dependency on primary metals, increase recycling and boost the performance of castings.

The PAM Group is also one of the groups in a recently annouced EPSRC Programme Grant entitled The Quest for Ultimate Electromagnetics using Spatial Transformations (QUEST). The research involves four universities (Queen Mary, St Andrews, Exeter and Oxford) and focuses on developing practical applications of spatial transformations for communication, wireless energy transfer, sensors and security. The PAM Group will develop the new materials and manufacturing technology required for practical applications. These are so-called metamaterials unavailable in nature in which the microstructure is contrived to create unusual electromagnetic properties such as bending of electromagnetic waves.

The PAM group investigates the manufacture of next generation electrodes for supercapacitors and batteries as part of the EPSRC's SuperGen Energy Storage collaboration. Our work focuses on the manufacture of thin film electrodes based on nanomaterials including carbon nanomaterials and transition metal oxides. The group is also part of the EPSRC Grand Challenge: Energy Storage for Low Carbon Grids, led by Imperial College London. In all cases, the emphasis is on scale-up manufacture, often using bespoke equipment developed in the group.

Full list of projects in the PAM group and their sponsors

Research studentships:

How to apply and closing dates for the following projects are given HERE

Novel processing of nanostructured films for energy storage

A new method for manufacturing electrodes for Li ion batteries, electrochemical supercapacitors and permeable fuel cell membranes has been developed in Oxford based on the spray deposition of suspensions of nanomaterials. The next stage in the evolution of this new process is to move from proof of concept to exploring the possibilities of manufacturing new energy storage devices with outstanding performance. The research will investigate how to produce designed meso-structures and hybrid electrodes involving novel combinations of: (i) engineered porosity for ion mobility, (ii) conductors for electron mobility, (iii) interfacial nanostructure for efficient charge transfer, and (iv) nanostructuring of electrochemical active materials for high surface area, storage capacity and strain tolerance. The project will involve a combination of processing and equipment development, microstructural characterisation and energy storage measurements.

Ultra high speed imaging of microstructural instability under external manipulation

Adding grain refiners to liquid alloys to promote nucleation and stirring during solidification to disrupt growth and break-up dendrites are effective and well-know ways to refine the microstructure and improve the mechanical properties of alloy castings. However there are many materials where such approaches are ineffective, impractical to apply or lead to unacceptable contamination. The ideas of this project are twofold: (1) to study the factors that lead to microstructural instability and dendrite fragmentation during solidification; and then (2) to enhance dramatically these effects by the application of pulsed magnetic fields or ultrasound, without any melt contamination. The project will involve room temperature solidification experiments under ultrasound on transparent organic alloys. The experiments will be make use of a highly instrumented computer-controlled solidification rig, and microstructure dynamics will be investigated using ultra high speed optical digital video. There will also be opportunities to undertake similar experiments on real metallurgical alloys using synchrotron X-rays at the Diamond Light Source. The in-situ imaging experiments will be backed up with post-solidification analysis of microstructure and numerical modelling.

Spray forming of hierachical metal-metal composites

Spray forming is a high technology casting process for producing large scale advanced alloys with unmatched quality and performance. This project will explore spray forming for the processing of “designer” alloys by co-spraying a second (or more) liquid or metal phase into the primary sprayed alloy so that co-deposition and mixing occur to produce unusual and potentially highly useful structures and properties. This project will make use of the leading spray forming facilities at Oxford to manufacture and study hierachical metal-metal composites in which microstructural features at the nano, micro and meso scale controlled separately by co-spraying of different materials, from the simplest mixture of two pure metals that are then heavily deformed to produce nanofibrils, through to the co-injection of nanoscale powders and mixing of different liquid sprays to produce in-situ reactions and otherwise difficult to process compositions and phases. The microstructure and mechanical properties will be studied for the most promising combinations, together with the effect of downstream processing operations.

Postdoctoral positions: There are currently no postdoc jobs available with allocated funding. Please check back another time.

Spray forming of alloys

Spray forming is a specialist casting route for highly alloyed materials. Using our large scale equipment we are studying the processing and properties of Al-Li alloys, bulk nanostructured Al alloys, Ni superalloys and speciality steels.

Vacuum plasma spraying

Our research is focused on the manufacture of multi-millimetre thick tungsten and ceramic coatings on steel and other substrates. One of the key applications is very thick tungsten coatings for plasma facing components in fusion reactors such as ITER.

Processing of nanostructures for energy applications

Nano-structured materials are attractive for energy storage applications because they can provide high specific surface areas leading to high energy densities. We are fabricating various novel nanostructured supercapacitors, using nanotubes and nanoparticles.

Advanced electronic packaging for extreme environments

Advanced electronic packaging for extreme environments Down-well temperatures of 250ºC and pressures >1,000bar provide a harsh environment for multi-material electronic packages (right) to endure. We are developing processing technologies and lifetime models for new interconnect and die attach materials.

Lead free solders in aerospace application

We are investigating the Pb-free solders in the harsh aerospace environment. We are using nanoindentation to study the properties of individual phases in ball grid arrays manufactured in-house (right) and incorporating the data into numerical models of lifetime.

A variety of other projects have just started or have just finished, including basic studies on dendrite fragmentation during solidification, freeze casting of ceramics, spray formed rapid tooling, smart composites and WINGNet - an EPSRC funded project on sustainability in the aerospace sector.

Our five most recent journal publications:

Scaleable ultra-thin and high power density graphene supercapacitor electrodes manufactured by aqueous exfoliation and spray deposition, B. Mendoza-Sanchez, B. Rasche, V. Nicolosi and P.S. Grant, Carbon, 52 (2013), 337-346. doi:10.1016/j.carbon.2012.09.035

Nanomechanical characterization of Sn-Ag-Cu joints at elevated temperature. Part 1: Young’s modulus, hardness and deformation mechanism, V.M.F. Marques, C. Johnston and P.S. Grant, Acta Mat., 61 (2013), 2460-2470. doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2013.01.019

Nanomechanical characterization of Sn-Ag-Cu joints at elevated temperature. Part 2: Nanoindentation creep and the relationship with uniaxial creep, V.M.F. Marques, C. Johnston and P.S. Grant, Acta Mat., 61 (2013), 2471-2480. doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2013.01.020

Charge storage properties of MoO3/SWCNT-COOH composite electrode in LiClO4 propylene carbonate, B. Mendoza-Sanchez and P.S. Grant, Electrochimica Acta. doi:10.1016/j.electacta.2013.03.072

An electrochemical microactuator based on highly textured LiCoO2, H. Zhang and P.S. Grant, Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, 176, (2013), 52-57. doi: 10.1016/j.snb.2012.08.079

Contact:

Professor Patrick Grant
Department of Materials, Oxford University
Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PH, UK
T: 44-1865-283763 or 283324
F: 44-1865-848785
patrick.grant@materials.ox.ac.uk