Richard Noble, project director of the Bloodhound Supersonic Car project, is to deliver the May lecture of the Sheffield Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society, on 28 May at the Knowledge Transfer Centre at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing.

The Bloodhound SSC is designed to be the first car to travel at greater than 1000 mph. More importantly, it will inspire the next generation of engineers. Richard Noble OBE led the team which created the world’s first supersonic car, Thrust SSC, and created and drove the previous fastest car in the world, the Thrust 2.

To register for the event, or to find out more about the project, please click on the relevant links below. Please note that registration is free to RAeS members and costs £5 for others, the price including membership of the Sheffield Branch for one year. The lecture will start at 7pm, so please please try to arrive at 6:30pm; refreshments will be available.

Register

Bloodhound SSC

In a collaborative study with Laser Zentrum Hannover (Germany) published today (23 April 2012) in the journal Biofabrication, the team describes a new method for making medical devices called nerve guidance conduits or NGCs.

The method is based on laser direct writing, which enables the fabrication of complex structures from computer files via the use of CAD/CAM (computer aided design/manufacturing), and has allowed the research team to manufacture NGCs with designs that are far more advanced than previously possible.

Currently patients with severe traumatic nerve damage suffer a devastating loss of sensation and/or movement in the affected limb. The traditional course of action, where possible, is to surgically suture or graft the nerve endings together. However, reconstructive surgery often does not result in complete recovery.

“When nerves in the arms or legs are injured they have the ability to re-grow, unlike in the spinal cord; however, they need assistance to do this,” said University of Sheffield Professor of Bioengineering, John Haycock. “We are designing scaffold implants that can bridge an injury site and provide a range of physical and chemical cues for stimulating this regrowth.”

The new conduit is made from a biodegradable synthetic polymer material based on polylactic acid and has been designed to guide damaged nerves to re-grow through a number of small channels.

“Nerves aren’t just like one long cable, they’re made up of lots of small cables, similar to how an electrical wire is constructed,” said lead author Dr Frederik Claeyssens, of the University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “Using our new technique we can make a conduit with individual strands so the nerve fibres can form a similar structure to an undamaged nerve.”

Once the nerve is fully regrown, the conduit biodegrades naturally. The team hopes that this approach will significantly increase recovery for a wide range of peripheral nerve injuries.

In laboratory experiments, nerve cells added to the polymer conduit grew naturally within its channelled structure and the research team is now working towards clinical trials.

“If successful we anticipate these scaffolds will not just be applicable to peripheral nerve injury, but could also be developed for other types of nerve damage too. The technique of laser direct writing may ultimately allow production of scaffolds that could help in the treatment of spinal cord injury” said Dr Claeyssens.

“What’s exciting about this work is that not only have we designed a new method for making nerve guide scaffolds which support nerve growth, we’ve also developed a method of easily reproducing them through micromolding.

“This technology could make a huge difference to patients suffering severe nerve damage,” he added.

Original Publication: “Two-photon polymerization-generated and micromolding-replicated 3-D scaffolds for peripheral neural tissue engineering applications”. A. Koroleva, A. A. Gill, I. Ortega, J.W. Haycock, S. Schlie, S.D. Gittard, B.N. Chichkov and F. Claeyssens.  Biofabrication, 2012, Volume 4, No. 2.

For more information, please contact Dr Joe Gaunt at the Polymer Centre.

Contact Joe Gaunt.

Her thesis was entitled “Covalently Cross-linked Colloidosomes” and her PhD supervisor was Prof. Steve Armes, the Director of the Polymer Centre. Kate’s PhD degree was part-sponsored by Procter & Gamble, who provided a CASE award to match her EPSRC studentship. Her research studies involved the synthesis of novel well-defined hydrophilic macromonomers via ATRP, the evaluation of these macromonomers for the preparation of model sterically-stabilised latexes, the use of these latexes to prepare low polydispersity Pickering emulsions and the covalent stabilisation of such emulsions to produce colloidosome microcapsules. Her results have been widely published in Macromolecules, Langmuir and Chemical Communications and some of her research samples have been further examined by scientists working at the University of Hull (UK), at McMaster University (Canada) and also at Newcastle University (Australia). These informal collaborations have produced three further joint papers in Langmuir, with a fourth manuscript currently in preparation.

After her PhD degree, Kate was awarded an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship and she continues to work within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Sheffield. She is currently evaluating whether block copolymer vesicles can be used as Pickering emulsifiers. She will present an invited lecture discussing her PhD studies at a major international polymer chemistry conference to be held in July 2012 at the University of Warwick.

For more information, please contact Prof Steve Armes via the link below.

Contact Steve Armes.

Bicontinuous cubic phases are a group of nanostructured liquid-crystalline phases having three-dimensionally interconnected nanochannels. Since the channel structures of these materials possess well-defined sizes and shapes, there are great expectations for their application in systems that require selective permeation of materials. The advantage of the 3-d ion channel networks over 1-d straight channels of the columnar phase or 2-d layers of lamellar phases is that the 3-d channel networks do not require alignment and that broken channels self-heal and reconnect – there are no domain boundaries.

The work involved the preparation of wedge-shaped ammonium and phosphonium salts, with 3,4,5-tris(alkyloxy)benzyl moieties. The materials exhibit thermotropic bicontinuous cubic and hexagonal columnar liquid-crystalline  phases by nanosegregation between ionophilic and ionophobic parts. The alkyl chain lengths on the cationic moieties, anion species, and alkyl chain lengths on the benzyl moieties have crucial effects on their thermotropic phase behavior.  Synchrotron diffraction convincingly showed that the structure is composed of three-dimensionally interconnected ion nanochannel networks surrounded by aliphatic domains. As an example of how these materials could be useful in battery applications, the LC onium salts dissolve lithium tetrafluoroborate without losing their nanostructure.

Original Publication: Induction of Thermotropic Bicontinuous Cubic Phases in Liquid-Crystalline Ammonium and Phosphonium Salts.  Takahiro Ichikawa, Masafumi Yoshio, Atsushi Hamasaki, Satomi Taguchi, Feng Liu, Xiang-bing Zeng, Goran Ungar, Hiroyuki Ohno, and Takashi Kato. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012, 134 (5), pp 2634–2643.

For more information, please contact Dr Joe Gaunt at the Polymer Centre.

Contact Joe Gaunt.

Nanostructured materials exhibit significantly different properties from their bulk equivalents. This opens the door for materials either for replacement of existing materials (e.g. magnetic material not relying on rare earth elements), or for materials with properties thus far inaccessible, and remarkable new devices.  Metamaterials created by controlling nanostructure can posses negative dielectric permittivity, negative magnetic permeability, or even negative refractive index. These properties can be used in unprecedented optical devices, among them cloaks that render objects invisible.

With the purpose to develop new metamaterials, four projects have been funded by the European Commission within the seventh framework program targeting the fabrication of functional nanostructured materials: NIM_NIL, NANOGOLD, MAGNONICS, and METACHEM.

To spread the latest results on how to model, fabricate, characterize, and use electromagnetic nanostructured materials to an audience that is blended from an interested industry as well as from passionate academia, we invite everybody to the International Conference on Metamaterial, which will be held July 3rd and 4th in Jena, Germany. At its heart this conference will have a dissemination workshop where these four EU-funded projects will present their main findings to an interested audience and discuss avenues towards their integration into products.

An exchange of ideas for future research and industrial exploitation and further collaboration will be facilitated

Subscription and details: http://www.phona.uni-jena.de/conference2012

We encourage the submission of contributed papers/posters for the workshop (submission deadline: June 1st 2012).The registration will close June 1st 2012

Further information regarding the four projects can be found in the Flyer.

The Smart scheme will support R&D projects which offer potentially significant rewards and could stimulate UK economic growth. Smart funding is available to single companies.

Three types of grant are available:

Proof of market – Projects will last up to 9 months, have a maximum grant of £25k, and up to 60% of total project costs may be funded.

Proof of concept – Projects will last up to 18 months, have a maximum grant of £100k, and up to 60% of total project costs may be funded.

Development of prototype – Projects will last up to 2 years and have a maximum grant of £250k; up to 35% of total project costs for medium enterprises, or up to 45% for small and micro enterprises, may be funded.

The scheme will be a rolling call with batch assessment deadlines at noon on the following dates:

More details of the scheme can be foundon the TSB website here. For more information on how the Polymer Centre can help with finding research collaboration partners and writing grant application, please contact Dr Joe Gaunt.

Contact Joe Gaunt.

On the 26th-29th August 2012 RAPRA are holding an inaugural international conference and trade event in the US – Global Polymer Innovation Expo.  A pre-event briefing is being held on Tuesday 24th April 2012, 10:30 – 14:30,  at RAPRA’s offices in Telford.

A funding application to support a mission of UK companies to the RAPRA Global Polymer Innovation Expo (GPIE) has already been submitted to UKTI.
RAPRA and the BPF, with the support of the Materials KTN, are offering the following support to UK mission delegates regardless of the UKTI bid:

Full details of the pre-event breifing can be found at:

Information regarding the Expo in August can be found at:

The University of Sheffield’s Polymer Centre and the Faraday Centre for Retail Excellence (Faraday) based at Leeds Metropolitan University have announced a partnership bringing cutting edge materials science research to the retail and consumer goods industries.

The partnership will connect companies with the University of Sheffield’s Polymer Centre – the UK’s largest single-institution network of academic polymer experts and the University’s contract polymer R&D spin-out, FaraPack Polymers Ltd. At the same time, Faraday will create and manage collaborative projects, applying new technologies and consumer insights to develop their clients’ branding propositions.

Professor Steve Armes, Director of the Polymer Centre and FaraPack Polymers, said: “We aim to undertake research of the highest scientific excellence with genuine, large-scale economic and societal impact. Faraday’s reach into some of the world’s leading brand owners will help us to achieve that vision in the retail sector.”

As part of this agreement, the Polymer Centre and FaraPack will offer free, expert technical assessments to Faraday clients and will be looking for other ways to assist them with new product development, their existing manufacturing processes and other technology and training opportunities. A number of pilot interactions are already bearing fruit.

Professor Cathy Barnes, Director of Faraday, said: “We are extremely pleased to have established strong links to the world-class polymer science and engineering expertise at the University of Sheffield. The University’s Polymer Centre and FaraPack Polymers both offer client-focused access to the expertise at Sheffield.

“Our predecessor organisation, Faraday Knowledge, was a co-founder of FaraPack Polymers and we have always maintained personal links between the teams”, she added. “Now that we have moved to Leeds Metropolitan University, our increased focus on brands and consumers makes a formal partnership with a technology group of the Polymer Centre’s profile a mutually beneficial proposition, helping us to serve the complete range of our client’s needs with the highest quality and opening up a new client base for Sheffield.”

Faraday Centre for Retail Excellence

FaraPack Polymers Ltd

IMechE Aerospace Division has organised a unique one day event with prestigious invited speakers in the field of environmentally improved aerospace structures. The registration fee including catering is £45 + VAT per delegate, and is open to all. The meeting will be held on Tuesday 24th April at the Knowledge Transfer Centre, AMRC with Boeing, The University of Sheffield. Delegates should register at the IMechE.

The event will include a tour of the facilities at AMRC with Boeing.

The invited lectures include:

• ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES IN AEROSPACE Roger Gardner, Aviation Environmental Expert, Omega
• ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY ADVANCED MATERIAL Professor Panos Tsakiropoulos, Professor of Metallurgy and POSCO Chair in Iron and Steel Technology, The University of Sheffield
• DESIGN FOR ENVIRONMENT WITHIN AIRBUS Gael Sarrieu, Environment Health & Safety Materials Specialist, Airbus UK
• RECYCLING OF ADVANCED COMPOSITES Dr Thomas Turner, Principal Research Fellow, The University of Nottingham
• BIOFUELS Professor Chris Wilson, Director of Resources, Chair of Departmental Resources Committee, The University of Sheffield
• SELF-HEALING TECHNOLOGIES IN AEROSPACE Professor Sybrand van der Zwaag, Director of the Delft Centre for Materials, Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands
• ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES IN MANUFACTURING Richard Scaife, Director of Composite Centre, Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing
• AERO-ENGINE TECHNOLOGY – OUR PART IN SUSTAINABLE AVIATION GROWTH Jon Hart, Environmental Strategy Manager for Rolls-Royce Civil Aerospace, Rolls-Royce
• LIFE-CYCLE ANALYSIS IN AEROSPACE STRUCTURES Professor Alma Hodzic, Research Director of Advanced Manufacturing Institute, AMRC with Boeing, The University of Sheffield
• UNDERSTANDING AVIATION EMISSIONS ON THE GLOBAL LEVEL Lynnette Dray, Senior Research Associate,  The University of Cambridge

To register, please visit the IMechE. Please contact Prof Alma Hodzic for more information.

IMechE

Prof Alma Hodzic

The Polymer Interdisciplinary Research Centre is based around the polymer science and engineering expertise at the universities of Bradford, Durham, Leeds and Sheffield. As the name suggests, it fosters the development of interdisciplinary collaborations in polymers and, in such a broadly applied field, the connections from underpinning science through engineering development to commercial processing are of fundamental importance.

Delegates heard overview presentations from each university, followed by a series of talks on work in progress. These included guest lectures by Dr Alan Wood, Composites Technical Leader at Victrex and Dr Zuowei Wang of Reading University. An unusual feature was that the meeting closed with an open discussion, feeding back on the day’s events and addressing the future form of the IRC, led by Prof Phil Coates of the University of Bradford.

It was agreed that the IRC will hold its next Spring Meeting in 2013 in Leeds.

Polymer IRC web pages