Most advanced materials are actually composite systems where each part is specifically tailored to provide a particular functionality often via doping. In electronic devices this may be p- or n-type behaviour (the preference to conduct positive of negative charges), in optical devices the ability to emit light at a given wavelength (such as in the infrared for optical fibre communications), or in magnetic materials the ability to store information based on the direction of a magnetic field for example. To enable the realisation of new devices it is essential to increase the density of functionality within a given device volume. Simple miniaturisation (i.e. to fit more devices of the same type but of smaller size) is limited in scope as the nanoscale regime is reached, not only by the well-known emergence of quantum effects, but by the simple capability to control the materials engineering on this scale. Self-assembly methods for example enable the creation of 0D (so called 'quantum dots' or 'artificial atoms'), 1D (wire-like) and 2D (sheet-like) materials with unique properties, but the subsequent control and modification of these is non-trivial and has yet to be demonstrated in many cases. This research aims to establish a Platform for Nanoscale Advanced Materials Engineering (P-NAME) facility that incorporates a new tool which will provide the capability required to deliver a fundamental change in our ability to design and engineer materials. The principle of the technique that we will adapt, is that which revolutionised the micro-electronics industry in the 20th century (ion-doping) but applied on the nanoscale for the first time. Furthermore, the P-NAME tool will be compatible with a scalable technology platform and therefore compatible with its use in high-tech device manufacture. Without this capability the production of increasingly complex materials offering enhance functionality at lower-power consumption will be difficult to achieve. The P-NAME facility will be established within a new UK National Laboratory for Advanced Materials (the Henry Royce Institute) at the University of Manchester. Access to the tool will be made available to UK academics and industry undertaking research into advanced functional materials and devices development.

Civil infrastructure is the key to unlocking net zero. To achieve the ambitious UK targets of net zero by 2050, we require innovative approaches to design, construction, and operation that prioritise energy efficiency, renewable resources, and low-carbon materials. Meeting net zero carbon emissions will require not only significant investment and planning, but also a radical shift in how we approach the design and management of our civil infrastructure. Reliable low carbon infrastructure sector solutions that meet real user needs are essential to ensure a smooth and safe transition to a net zero future. To address these challenges, the UK must develop highly skilled infrastructure professionals who can champion this urgent, complex, interconnected and cross-disciplinary transition to net zero infrastructure. This EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment: Unlocking Net Zero (FIBE3 CDT) aims to lead this transformation by co-developing and co-delivering an inspirational doctoral training programme with industry partners. FIBE3 will focus on meeting the user needs of the construction and infrastructure sector in its pursuit of net zero. Our goal is to equip emerging talents from diverse academic and social backgrounds with the skills, knowledge and qualities to engineer the infrastructure needed to unlock net zero, including technological, environmental, economic, social and demographic challenges. Achievable outcomes will include a dynamic roadmap for the infrastructure that unlocks net zero, cohort-based doctoral student training with immersive industry experience, a CDT which is firmly embedded within existing net zero research initiatives, and expanded networks and outward-facing education. These outcomes will be centred around four thematic enablers: (1) existing and disruptive/new technologies, (2) radical circularity and whole life approach, (3) AI-driven digitalisation and data, and (4) risk-based systems thinking and connectivity. FIBE3 doctoral students will be trained to unlock net zero by evolving the MRes year to include intimate industry engagement through the novel introduction of a fourth dimension to our successful 'T-shaped' training model and designing the PhD with regular outward-facing deliverables. We have leveraged industry-borne ideas to align theory and practice, streamline business and research needs, and provide both academic-led and industry-led training activities. Cohort-based training in technical, commercial, transferable and personal skills will be provided for our graduates to become skilled professionals and leaders in delivering net zero infrastructure. FIBE3's alignment with real industry needs is backed by a 31 strong consortium, including owners, consultants, contractors, technology providers and knowledge transfer partners, who actively seek engagement for solutions and will support the CDT with substantial cash (£2.56M) and in-kind (£8.88M) contributions. At Cambridge, the FIBE3 CDT will be embedded within an inspirational research and training environment, a culture of academic excellence and within a department with strategic cross-cutting research themes that have net zero ambitions at their core. This is exemplified by Cambridge's portfolio of over £60M current aligned research grant funding and our internationally renowned centres and initiatives including the Digital Roads of the Future Initiative, the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, Cambridge Zero and Cambridge Centres for Climate Repair and Carbon Credits, as well as our strong partnerships with UK universities and leading academic centres across the globe. Our proposed vision, training structure and deliverables are exciting and challenging; we are confident that we have the right team to deliver a highly successful FIBE3 CDT and to continue to develop outstanding PhD graduates who will be net zero infrastructure champions of the future.

The UK Foundation Industries (Glass, Metals, Cement, Ceramics, Bulk Chemicals and Paper), are worth £52B to the UK economy, produce 28 million tonnes of materials per year and account for 10% of the UK total CO2 emissions. These industries face major challenges in meeting the UK Government's legal commitment for 2050 to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 100% relative to 1990, as they are characterised by highly intensive use of both resources and energy. While all sectors are implementing steps to increase recycling and reuse of materials, they are at varying stages of creating road maps to zero carbon. These roadmaps depend on the switching of the national grid to low carbon energy supply based on green electricity and sustainable sources of hydrogen and biofuels along with carbon capture and storage solutions. Achievement of net zero carbon will also require innovations in product and process design and the adoption of circular economy and industrial symbiosis approaches via new business models, enabled as necessary by changes in national and global policies. Additionally, the Governments £4.7B National Productivity Investment Fund recognises the need for raising UK productivity across all industrial sectors to match best international standards. High levels of productivity coupled with low carbon strategies will contribute to creating a transformation of the foundation industry landscape, encouraging strategic retention of the industries in the UK, resilience against global supply chain shocks such as Covid-19 and providing quality jobs and a clean environment. The strategic importance of these industries to UK productivity and environmental targets has been acknowledged by the provision of £66M from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support a Transforming Foundation Industries cluster. Recognising that the individual sectors will face many common problems and opportunities, the TFI cluster will serve to encourage and facilitate a cross sectoral approach to the major challenges faced. As part of this funding an Academic Network Plus will be formed, to ensure the establishment of a vibrant community of academics and industry that can organise and collaborate to build disciplinary and interdisciplinary solutions to the major challenges. The Network Plus will serve as a basis to ensure that the ongoing £66M TFI programme is rolled out, underpinned by a portfolio of the best available UK interdisciplinary science, and informed by cross sectoral industry participation. Our network, initially drawn from eight UK universities, and over 30 industrial organisations will support the UK foundation industries by engaging with academia, industry, policy makers and non-governmental organisations to identify and address challenges and opportunities to co-develop and adopt transformative technologies, business models and working practices. Our expertise covers all six foundation industries, with relevant knowledge of materials, engineering, bulk chemicals, manufacturing, physical sciences, informatics, economics, circular economy and the arts & humanities. Through our programme of mini-projects, workshops, knowledge transfer, outreach and dissemination, the Network will test concepts and guide the development of innovative outcomes to help transform UK foundation industries. The Network will be inclusive across disciplines, embracing best practice in Knowledge Exchange from the Arts and Humanities, and inclusive of the whole UK academic and industrial communities, enabling access for all to the activity programme and project fund opportunities.

We will install a 300kV aberration corrected STEM that utilises artificial intelligence (AI) to simultaneously improve the temporal resolution and precision/sensitivity of images while minimizing the deleterious effect of electron beam damage. Uniquely, this microscope goes beyond post-acquisition uses of AI, and integrates transformational advances in data analytics directly into its operating procedures - experiments will be designed by and for AI, rather than by and for a human operator's limited visual acuity and response time. This distributed algorithm approach to experimental design, is accomplished through a compressed sensing (CS) framework that allows measurements to be obtained under extremely low dose and/or dose rate conditions with vastly accelerated frame rates. Optimizing dose / speed / resolution permits diffusion to be imaged on the atomic scale, creating wide-ranging new opportunities to characterise metastable and kinetically controlled materials and processes at the forefront of innovations in energy storage and conversion, and the wide range of novel engineering/medical functionalities created by nanostructures, composites and hybrid materials. The microscope incorporates in-situ gas / liquid / heating / cryo and straining / indentation stages to study the dynamics of synthesis, function, degradation / corrosion and regeneration / recycling on their fundamental length and time scales. It will be housed in the Albert Crewe Centre (ACC), which is a University of Liverpool (UoL) shared research facility (SRF) specialising in new experimental strategies for high-resolution/operando electron microscopy in support of a wide range of academic/industrial user projects. UoL supports all operational costs for the SRFs (service contracts, staff, consumables, etc), meaning that access to the microscope will always be "free at the point of use" for all academic users. This open accessibility is managed through a user-friendly online proposal submission and independent peer review mechanism linked to an adaptable training/booking system, which allows the ACC to provide extensive research opportunities and training activities for all users. In particular, for early career scientists, we commit experimental resources supporting UoL's commitment to the Prosper project for flexible career development and the Research Inclusivity in a Sustainable Environment (RISE) initiative that is creating a research culture maximising inclusivity and diversity synergistically with encouraging creativity and innovation. This new microscope aligns to several priority areas of research into materials, energy and personalised medicine at the UoL, priority research areas of EPSRC and national facilities in electron microscopy, imaging and materials science, and UKRI plans for infrastructure growth (https://www.ukri.org/research/infrastructure/). In addition to supporting extensive research programs at UoL linked to investments in the Materials Innovation factory (MIF), the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy (SIRE) and the new Digital Innovation Facility (DIF), this unique and complimentary microscope will be affiliated to and leverage from partnership with the national microscopy facilities at Harwell (ePSIC) and Daresbury (UKSuperSTEM) and the Henry Royce Institute, as well as form extensive research links to the Rosalind Franklin Institute and the Faraday Institution. We have established (and will expand through outreach activities) an extensive network of partners/collaborators from the N8 university group, Johnson Matthey and NSG, the Universities of Swansea, Birmingham, Warwick, Oxford, Cambridge, Loughborough, Edinburgh and Glasgow and Northwest UK area SME's as well as from universities in the USA, Ireland, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Denmark, India, Singapore, China, South Africa and Spain who will create a dynamic, innovative and collaborative community driving the long-term research impact of this facility.

The UK engineering coatings industry is worth over £11bn and affects products worth £140bn. The vision of this project is to create internationally unique multi-purpose PVD/PECVD coatings system which will enable innovation in advanced science of future hybrid coatings. This new facility would be built on the existing Leeds coating platform capability and would create system with no similar functionality available internationally. Using existing Leeds coating platform we can already deposit carbides, nitrides and diamond-like carbide (DLC) coatings, and we are exploiting this mainly for tribological applications with automotive, energy and lubricant companies. With this investment, we will be able to additionally process novel nanocomposite coatings, next generation of DLC coatings (with incorporated nanoparticles), advanced optical coatings and sensor coatings, carry out functionalisation of powders, barrier layers, coatings on polymers and coatings on complex shapes. This proposal aligns with a major new initiative at the University of Leeds to create an integrated gateway to Physical Sciences and Engineering by investing in the collaborative Bragg Centre that will house new state-of-the-art research facilities for the integrated development, characterisation and exploitation of novel advanced functional materials. This proposal also coincides with Leeds University investment in the Nexus Centre - a hub for the local innovation community as well as national and international organisations looking to innovate and engage in world-leading research. The upgraded coating platform would play a strategic role in the UK Surface Engineering landscape and complement existing national facilities. It would form a part of the new Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, of which Leeds is a partner. The configuration of the new instrument is designed to be versatile and serve a wide range of internal and external users with widely different classes of advanced materials. A number of specific activities have been planned to ensure that potential beneficiaries have the opportunity to engage with new coating facility. The economic competitiveness of the UK's manufacturing industry will benefit from new, commercially exploitable IP in novel cutting-edge Surface Engineering technology. Members of an academic community and industry will be able to benefit directly from the proposed research and generated new knowledge. They will gain new skills and know-how related to the latest advancements of PVD technologies. Improved adoption of Surface Engineering will result in wider UK PLC economic and societal impacts associated with development of functional surfaces for automotive, aerospace, biomedical, healthcare, defence, agriculture, oil & gas and packaging industries.