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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.
Full list of projects in the PAM group and their sponsors
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| Research projects available | ||||
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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. |
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| Capabilities | ||||
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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| Archive | ||||
![]() 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. |
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| Publications | ||||
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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 |
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