26 minute read
Research clusters
Bio Materials Cluster
Cluster Lead: Professor Andreas M Grabrucker
1. What were the research highlights of the cluster in 2021?
What was most important is that we continued to have research highlights while working during the pandemic. I congratulate all our researchers, in particular those who were in the labs daily, carrying out experiments. Not only did they adhere to the restrictions, but they also produced great results. The data generated in 2021 led to more than 100 scientific publications and several patents. Approximately one quarter of the publications were in journals that rank in the top 10% of their respective fields. This reflects the impact and quality of the cluster research activities.
To summarise:
• Dr Christophe Silien, Professor Tewfik Soulimane,
Professor Damien Thompson and Professor
Tofail Syed investigated piezoelectric effects in biological materials. This study raises the question of whether piezoelectricity might be important for fundamental physiological processes in cells. • Dr Kieran McGourty explored the cellular mechanisms that control processes taking place in the brain to allow nerve cells to grow connections. • Dr Eoghan Cunnane, a €1.5M ERC grant recipient, and Professor Michael Walsh published a study that will enable the fabrication of a biomimetic urethral scaffold, mimicking the mechanics, composition and structure of the native tissue.
2. United Nations Secretary-General, António
Guterres, said: ‘We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.’ How will the cluster’s research activities protect the planet and the people for the future?
Research in the Bio Materials Cluster is focused on developing devices and therapies to help maintain or restore good health and wellbeing. Emerging from a pandemic, I think we are more aware of the benefits of research and appreciate the impact diseases have on our lives and on society in general. We have designed medical devices and developed and evaluated functional foods, nutraceuticals, drugs and drug delivery systems. Principal investigators and their teams in the Bio Materials Cluster are working in areas that aim to reduce the mortality of non-communicable and infectious diseases, increase reproductive health and reduce hunger worldwide.
PhD students: Janelle Stanton and Adrian Hannon, Bio Materials Cluster
Our research focuses on key areas such as mental health, cancer, cardiovascular health, inflammatory diseases, diabetes and pain disorders. This is important, given that cancer continues to be the second most common cause of death in Europe after heart disease. Globally, mental health conditions have seen a 13% rise in the last decade; almost 50 million couples experience infertility; and in 2020, approximately 750 million people faced hunger.
Today, we lay the groundwork for novel therapeutics, nutraceuticals, medical devices, biomaterials, and tools for more personalised medicine approaches. We should not forget that it takes, on average, ten years for a new medicine to complete the journey from initial discovery to the marketplace. The research we do today in the Bio Materials Cluster will contribute significantly to advancements in tomorrow’s health and wellbeing. For example, based on years of research from the UL Department of Biological Sciences and the Bernal Institute, Dr Jakki Cooney and her team were granted a patent on a revolutionary medical device to treat sepsis. Not only are results important, but also the way we do research. In 2021, the Bernal Biolabs were the first labs at UL to be certified by My Green Lab® as part of the Green Lab Certification programme, considered the international gold standard in lab sustainability. We optimise all our research protocols, considering energy usage and waste production. We hope that these processes will translate to other labs around the world, through our students and researchers carrying this green culture to new jobs and environments.
Professor Andreas Grabrucker and Dr Ann Katrin Sauer, Bio Materials Cluster
4. How is the cluster research connected to academia and industry in Ireland and internationally?
The Bio Materials Cluster research groups work with more than 35 industry partners. Among these are: BD Biosciences, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Sanofi, Pfizer and Janssen. We also have strong ties to Irish companies such as Serosep, Curran Scientific and many more. This allows us to do research that spans ‘bench to bedside’.
With our academic partners across the globe, we contribute to research networks that explore the underlying mechanisms of diseases; together with our industry partners, we translate our research findings into real-life applications; and with our clinical partners, we follow our research outputs on their way to everyday clinical practice. For example, Professor Michael Walsh’s group improved the design of catheters to prevent accidental inflation of the catheter balloon inside the urethra. The improved catheter is now in use in hospitals in Europe and the United States. This approach allows us to have a reallife impact far beyond the borders of Ireland.
Case study
Can we develop sophisticated mimicking systems to study how tissue is made?
Adrian Hannon, PhD student, Bio Materials and Molecular & Nano Materials Cluster
Tissue has a defined structure, with different cells arranged in different regions according to their function. An example would be where the barrier layer of the intestine, known as the epithelium, gets completely regenerated every five days. This process is the result of the activities of stem cells at the base of finger-like villi of the intestinal wall, a region known as the crypt. Dr Kieran McGourty’s team of biomedical engineers, cell biologists and clinical and industrial collaborators aim to utilise a multidisciplinary approach to characterise healthy and diseased tissue. At present, they are focused on the architecture of intestinal tissue. The team is currently mapping the cellular environment and behaviour. Ultimately, they want to use this understanding to create materials that mimic the natural environments of healthy or diseased tissue in platforms outside the body. One of the team’s major research projects is a collaboration with BD Biosciences, which is focused on colorectal cancer, one of the leading causes of global mortality. However, therapeutic strategies to tackle this disease are hampered by a lack of understanding of the complex tumour structures. In cancer, stem cells can be dormant or inactive, which means that they can hide from the immune system and be resistant to chemotherapy. As the drivers of cell dormancy remain unclear, understanding normal cell behaviour and how cells regulate normal tissue homeostasis and growth in intestinal tissue will provide clues to the signals that make cells dormant and potentially abnormal in cancer. An interesting but complex task is to look at the microenvironment surrounding cells and the environment in their vicinity, to understand what positional cues they are receiving.
Ongoing work in the McGourty group has identified signals (chemical and mechanical) from the tissue microenvironment that can drive adult stem cells to become dormant. Using complex imaging and ‘omics’ techniques, an ‘environmental landscape’ around the cells can be produced in both healthy intestine and tumour tissue. This approach identifies replicating or dormant cells and maps them back to their microenvironment to identify signals that drive these cell behaviours. Cutting-edge imaging technology at the Bernal Institute has allowed researchers to map cells and their environments, in both healthy tissue and in colorectal tumours removed from patients that underwent surgery at University Hospital Limerick under the care of Dr Colin Pierce and his team. Although this approach offers high throughput and great understanding of the positions of cells, it is limited in the number of targets that can be investigated simultaneously. In addition, through ongoing collaboration with BD Biosciences, the McGourty lab has developed novel applications for ‘lipid integrating cell labelling technology’. This is used to mark the location of dormant cells in tumours before doing full singlecell sequencing, in order to reach a huge number of target parameters simultaneously. Traditionally, it was not possible to retain positional information using single-cell sequencing approaches. These innovative approaches allow the biological processes active within a cell to be thoroughly evaluated, while also identifying where the cell is located. The knowledge generated through these characterisation techniques will enable the team to design biomaterial scaffolds, to recreate healthy tissue and tumour models and to then further investigate cell behaviour in both healthy and diseased states, particularly stem-cell and cancer stem-cell behaviour from the intestine.
Employing state-of-the-art 3D bioprinting, and multicellular organoid techniques (a collection of cells that behave like complex tissue), the intricate structures of the intestine can be generated, e.g. villi of the intestine. Further, cells such as immune cells and cancer cells can be encapsulated in hydrogel bioinks and precisely positioned using novel 3D bioprinting approaches. In this way, the researcher can control the position and environment that a cell will experience, in order to investigate the causal links to cell behaviour. These models are used to recapitulate the healthy tissue and tumour microenvironments and assess cell dynamics in tissue generation, cancer tumour progression and treatment efficacy. This study is published in Cytokine & Growth Factor Reviews. The authors are from the Bernal Institute, Department of Chemical Sciences and School of Engineering, UL.
Reference
Sigita Malijauskaite, Sinéad Connolly, David Newport, Kieran McGourty (2021). Gradients in the in vivo intestinal stem cell compartment and their in vitro recapitulation in mimeticplatforms. Vol. 60, August 2021, Cytokine & Growth Factor Reviews.
Composites Cluster Cluster Lead: Professor Paul Weaver
1. United Nations Secretary-General, António
Our focus has not changed, noting we have been working on such issues for a number of years. The cluster research agenda began in 2016 and is influenced by global warming and the requirement to reduce emissions, along with continuous advancements in digital technologies. Our work is of profound importance to the rapidly evolving lowcarbon global economy, so we could not lose pace during the pandemic. We are developing new intellectual property in composites materials, manufacturing and design technology, which will help reduce the cost of energy for wind turbine blades and lead to cheaper, betterperforming aircraft (less fuel burn) and we do this in an environmentally friendly, sustainable way.
We are developing new sustainable materials and designs for wind turbine blades, hydrogen storage vessels and cars of the future. Next-generation, highperformance composites will not only address the fuel emissions crisis, but will also be multifunctional and recyclable materials. Our researchers are producing bio-based carbon fibres from forestry residue, which will be used for developing highspecific stiffness and high-strength carbon fibre for sustainable structural applications. In doing so, it will replace non-sustainable, oil-based carbon fibre. Now we can exploit materials to make the best use of them for the future, to recycle and reuse them and reduce the materials footprint.
We do this by identifying and seeking potential researchers from non-conventional backgrounds. Making connections and ensuring continuous collaboration with universities from around the world helps us to address inequalities in education and support talent development. The Erasmus+ and International Credit Mobility programmes not only provide funding for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from around the world, they place a strong focus on social inclusion. These funding schemes stipulate that, in the case of an equivalent academic level, preference should be assigned to students from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Helping researchers to join our group at UL results in additional publications and more funding applications. I hope to further enhance our collaborative work with both EU and non-EU universities.
4. Is there any barrier that you think hinders the cluster research activities? If so, can you suggest a solution?
Progress has been made at UL to advance research. The solution to achieving our shared goal of being a world-leading university lies in championing this culture of continuous improvement, collaboration and partnership.
Case Enhanced sustainability and study structural efficiency in composite structures containing access holes, fasteners and slots
Cut-outs are ubiquitous in engineering structures and represent windows, access holes, slots and fastener holes for joining operations. They reduce material usage and, by doing so, increase sustainability both directly and also indirectly by reducing fuel costs in transportation structures. The presence of cutouts in composite structures currently results in stress or strain concentrations, leading to potential structural inefficiency and sustainability reductions. Steering continuous tows around cut-outs using advanced fibre-placement techniques is an emerging technology being pioneered at the Bernal Institute that can potentially alleviate such problems. Furthermore, continuous tow steering around cutouts eliminates the need for cutting tows, thereby precluding 3D stress concentrations, which could lead to premature material failure. Ongoing research within the Composites Cluster investigates the potential for continuous tow steering in aerospace and wind engineering. We will further discuss two examples of applications studied in 2021. The first example of using continuous tow steering around cut-outs concerns an elliptical access hole in an aircraft wingbox (Oliveri et al. 2021) in collaboration with Airbus UK (Fig. 2).1 Numerical results show that stresses and strains around the cut-out with continuous tow steering are around 30% smaller than those obtained when using conventional composite laminates (Zucco et al. 2021).2 With the aim of providing experimental validation of our concept, this wingbox will be manufactured and experimentally tested in 2022. The second example explores the possibility of having fully folded flexible hinges in wind turbine blades to ease their transportation and installation. To facilitate the folding process of a flexible hinge embedded in an aerofoil section, Bowen designed two slotted cut-outs in its folding region (Bowen 2022).3 Then, to reduce large and localised stresses in the vicinity of the cut-outs, continuous tow steering was used to preclude otherwise necessary cutting of tows. Results show that approximately 10% weight can be saved, compared with conventional laminates.
Finally, it is worth noting that traditional ways of reducing stresses and strains around cut-outs use additional reinforcements that considerably increase overall structural mass and complexity. However, our method avoids such problems. Overall, the impact on society is a reduced carbon footprint in transportation vehicles, especially aircraft, by using less fuel and fewer oil-derived materials, as well as reducing the cost of renewable energy in wind turbine blades.
A Fig. 2 From let to right: (a) schematic picture of the static test of a wing box section with an elliptical cut out; (b) continuous tow-steered tows around the cut-out for each layer; (c) top view of the panel with continuous tow steering around the cut-out.
B C References
1 V Oliveri, G Zucco, M Rouhi, E
Cosentino, T Young, R O’Higgins,
PM Weaver (2021). Design of a unitized thermoplastic composite out-of-autoclave three-bay wingbox demonstrator. AIAA
SciTech Forum, 0919. 2 G Zucco, M Rouhi, V Oliveri, E
Cosentino, R O’Higgins, PM Weaver (2021). Continuous Tow Steering
Around an Elliptical Cutout in a
Composite Panel. AIAA Journal 59(12), 5117–5129. 3 A Bowen (2022). PhD Thesis,
University of Limerick.
Process Engineering Cluster
Cluster Lead: Professor Gavin Walker
1. Did your researchers work on Covid-related issues?
Dr Ahmad Albadarin, Dr Rabah Mouras and I received SFI Covid Rapid Response funding for ‘Engineered Inhalable Antiviral-Composites for Pulmonary Delivery with Optimal Therapeutic Outcomes’ (project title), with Teva Pharmaceuticals Ireland. The award enabled us to develop, optimise and test inhalable antiviral formulations, which were prepared using spray-drying and/or freeze-drying technologies at the Bernal Institute. In collaboration with the School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Waterford Institute of Technology, the efficacy of these novel inhalable formulations for antiviral activity at the lung epithelium was assessed using in-vitro and ex-vivo approaches. Airway models were infected with an inactive virus to establish standard operation procedures and quantify the model response. Also, Oisín Kavanagh and I published ‘Inhaled hydroxychloroquine to improve efficacy and reduce harm in the treatment of COVID-19’, in collaboration with the School of Pharmacy, TCD and Janssen Pharmaceuticals Ireland and US. The same team had a subsequent paper published, ‘Investigating structural property relationships to enable repurposing of pharmaceuticals as zinc ionophores’.
References
Oisín Kavanagh, Anne Marie Healy, Francis Dayton, Shane Robinson, Niall J O’Reilly, Brian Mahoney, Aisling Arthur, Gavin Walker & John P Farragher (2020). Inhaled hydroxychloroquine to improve efficacy and reduce harm in the treatment of COVID-19. Medical Hypotheses, Oct; 143:110110. Oisin Kavanagh, Robert Elmes, Finbarr O’Sullivan, John Farragher, Shane Robinson & Gavin Walker (2021). Investigating structural property relationships to enable repurposing of pharmaceuticals as zinc ionophores. Pharaceuticals, 13(12), 2032.
2. United Nations Secretary-General, António
Research within the cluster has been strategically aligned to the UN Grand Challenges and, due to the pandemic, this focus has been further strengthened on research in specific areas within: • Health. Good Health and Wellbeing, to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all, at all ages, via: – Optimised biopharma processing – Reduced time to market for new drugs – Improvements to food production industries to meet increased demand on food supply due to growing population.
• Energy. Affordable and Clean Energy, to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all via: – Increasing substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix – Advanced energy and carbon-storage/ conversion – Chemical process synthesis and integration.
• Environment and sustainability. To ensure responsible, sustainable consumption and production patterns via: – Reducing waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse – Solvent-free processing of advanced materials – Multiphase, hybrid and bio-processing.
The focus of the cluster is in areas of health, energy and environment, which are key to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Regarding the next ten or fifteen years, the main mechanism for funding the cluster’s research activity is through our nationally hosted centres within Bernal and UL, which are: SSPC, the SFI research centre for pharmaceuticals; CONFIRM, the SFI centre for smart manufacturing; the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
Technology Centre (PMTC), Enterprise Ireland (EI); and the Dairy Processing Technology Centre (DPTC), EI. From these national platforms, the cluster has leveraged significant SFI, EI and EU funding on a project basis. In all these programmes, societal impact is crucially important, in both the short term (typically 2–5 years) for EI programmes and longer term (10–15 years) for SFI and some low technology readiness level (TRL) EU programmes. It is important for an engineering cluster to concentrate on low TRLs (1–6) ranging from (1) basic principles observed and reported, through to (6) system/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment. This fundamental long-term research is instrumental for the cluster and for Bernal to have a lasting impact on society, both in Ireland and globally.
The cluster is aligned to SFI, EI and Horizon Europe legislation on diversity, equity and inclusion. The mix of nationalities is immense, within both the faculty staff and research community, and is a reflection how Bernal, and specifically the cluster, attracts global talent. Throughout the cluster, we follow the SSPC mantra in that:
… we believe that celebrating and supporting our diverse community provides a solid foundation for success. Cultivating an environment that enables the advancement of complex scientific challenges through the range of perspectives, ideas and experiences of our diverse community, is key to our individual and collective success. We believe that everyone should feel free to bring their whole self to work.
The cluster has also been actively involved in securing the new SALI (Senior Academic Leadership Initiative) Chair in Bioprocess Engineering for the Bernal Institute and UL. The aim of SALI is to accelerate progress in achieving gender balance at the senior academic level in higher education institutions.
Case study
The Bernal Institute was successful in securing funding from Enterprise Ireland Capital Call 2020 to acquire a combined fluidised bed granulator and dryer to help Irish pharmaceutical and dairy industries advance. The total EI award (circa €500K) will assist the development for advanced control of the fluidised bed process, equipped with multiple process analytical tools (PAT) for monitoring and control. This equipment can reduce development times and costs and enhance understanding of the process, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry. This is a unique capability in Ireland, where this infrastructure can contribute to an understanding of PAT improvements and process modelling for the fluidised bed coating, drying and granulation processes.
Dr Sowmiya Krishnaraj, Process Engineering Cluster
Industry need
Particle/granule coating, drying and granulation are processes that are complex to control in manufacturing sectors such as pharma, biopharma and dairy, where development costs and product waste are high. Low product yields (and, in the case of small molecule pharmaceuticals, to include the use of carbon-intensive solvents) have opened up opportunities for Industry 4.0 technologies to improve these issues. Thus, (bio)pharmaceutical and dairy processing companies are actively looking for opportunities and appropriate infrastructures to help optimise production capability. Understanding how PAT-enabled technologies can be utilised to benefit production processes is an immediate industry need. Combining PAT with software for process visualisation and control can allow for inline and instant data recovery of the process, where models can be utilised for process control. This equipment and technology will help Irish-based (bio)pharma, dairy and biotech manufacturing to better utilise and understand PAT potential and maximise production efficiency and product yield.
Dr Patrick Cronin and Dr Jacky Sorrel Bouanga Boudiombo in one of the purpose-built Process Engineering labs at the Bernal Institute
Impact on research activities
The new equipment and personnel will help Bernal- and UL-hosted national centres (PMTC, SSPC, DPTC, CONFIRM) expand the scope of research, where previous lack of infrastructure presented limitations. The use of a fluidised bed system enables smaller-scale development for industry, with a focus on the benefits of PAT and improved process control via Industry 4.0 technologies. The integrated PAT includes a near infrared spectrometer and particle sizer, which are both capable of providing inline, real-time process measurement. Fitted with a process control software system, this offers a powerful low-code/no-code environment for PAT-driven process automation and control, along with an Industry 4.0 experience of cloud-based data analytics and visualisation. Our goals are to maximise the impact of our research, which enhances our industrial engagement, and to broaden the reach of Bernal through PMTC/SSPC/DPTC/CONFIRM. The new equipment will strengthen the Institute’s infrastructure and allow for new collaborations with industry in the pharmaceutical, food and biotechnology areas, which are critical to Ireland’s economic growth.
Molecular & Nano Materials Cluster
Cluster Lead: Professor Kevin M Ryan
1. Did your researchers work on Covid-related issues?
Most of the pandemic-related projects were in the health and biomaterials space, sometimes involving other clusters. However, we had a number of activities relevant to the pandemic across many levels, from final-year projects (e.g. looking at the rate of environmental degradation of Covid masks) to higher-level research (e.g. on antibacterial and antiviral materials for surfaces).
2. United Nations Secretary-General, António
Guterres, said: ‘We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.’ Has the pandemic changed the way the cluster works to protect the planet and the people for the future?
I think one outcome of the pandemic and of homeworking is that the general public have become more conscious of energy issues, in terms of their home environment and fuel costs for commutes. This can help translate to a greater uptake in more environmentally friendly technologies such as solar generation, electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicle-to-grid technologies that allow EVs to not only charge from the grid but also supply power back to the network. The recovery has brought about an acceptance of everyone’s individual responsibility to contribute to this challenge.
3. How will the work that the cluster is doing now impact society in ten or fifteen years?
The Mol-Nano cluster is working across a wide range of projects, with applications ranging from nextgeneration batteries, piezoelectrics, photovoltaic materials, water harvesting, industrial chemical separation, bioelectrochemistry and next-generation molecular-based electronics. Progress in these areas at Bernal is made possible by our unique capabilities to design new materials, synthesise them in the lab, characterise them at the nanoscale and apply them in technological devices at the frontiers of science and engineering. Each of these projects is pushing the boundaries of what is possible with materials, by controlling their molecular and nanoscale properties to allow capability significantly beyond what is possible with existing materials.
Dr Xiang-Jing Kong, Molecular & Nano Materials Cluster
Some examples: • Professor Damien Thompson and his group have developed a way to make complex computing functions with molecules that were previously only possible with semiconductor devices. As the computing power of microchips reaches their limit due to scaling limitations, the ability to make advanced-logic devices using these molecular memristors can allow the continued increase of computing power into the next decades. • In my own work and with collaborators, Dr Tadhg
Kennedy and Dr Hugh Geaney, we have developed methods to increase the energy density in lithiumion batteries using nanoscale materials. Over the next decades, this can allow EVs that charge in seconds, with ranges that are comparable with internal combustion engines and at a lower cost. • Professor Uschi Bangert’s work on metalferroelectric super crystals with periodically curved metallic layers can lead to new materials, where properties can be controlled by electric fields. • Dr Shalini Singh and her group are focused on synthesis of nanocrystals and their functionalisation. • Professor Micheál Scanlon and his team are working on electrochemistry. • Dr Ning Liu and her team are working on optoelectronics of nanocrystals that will allow new materials to either harness light for photovoltaic storage or emit light for beyond state-of-the-art displays or use light instead of electrons for all optical integrated circuits. This is a snapshot of only some of the activities of the 19 principal investigators in the cluster. All of the cluster research activities will impact the technologies of the future to drive economic growth, while meeting a large number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in terms of transport, sustainable energy storage and generation, clean water and climate action, and industry innovation of nextgeneration computing.
4. How is the cluster working to encourage more diversity, equity and inclusion in academia?
A lot of our members are part of Athena SWAN initiatives in their departments. Athena SWAN awards are granted in recognition of the positive impact of actions that a department or institute has undertaken to achieve gender equality among staff and students in higher education. The Physics Department at UL, for example, is one of the only departments in the country with a silver award and the Chemical Sciences Department has a bronze award. The cluster is working hand in hand with the Bernal Institute and UL to put measures in place to fulfil the principles of Athena SWAN and diversity, to include our work activities, researchers, students and external partners.
Case study
High mass loading silicon nanowire anodes for nextgeneration li-ion batteries
Silicon (Si) has emerged as the most promising anode material for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) as it offers a tenfold theoretical increase in lithium storage capacity over conventional graphite-based anodes. Si also exhibits multiple advantages such as huge natural abundance, relative low-cost environmental friendliness and low working voltage. However, the application of Si as an anode material is challenging, because it expands approximately 300% during battery cycling, resulting in pulverisation of the material and a low number of charge/discharge cycles. Si in a nanowire (NW) morphology promises better performance, as its one-dimensional nanostructure can accommodate the mechanical stress and large strains that occur during operation without pulverisation. The main challenge associated with real-world prospects of Si NWs is the low areal mass loadings achievable using conventional current collectors. The Bernal nanomaterials research team, led by Professor Kevin M Ryan and Dr Tadhg Kennedy and funded by the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine (MaREI), have overcome this issue by swapping the planar current collector with a highly conductive, interwoven stainlesssteel fibre cloth (SSFC). The project involves the utilisation of the mechanically robust interwoven SSFC as a flexible substrate to directly grow a dense loading of Si NWs. This anode exhibits key practical properties required for the next generation of LIBs for portable electronic devices and electric vehicles such as a high mass loading of Si, high capacity and a long cycle life. The team demonstrated a laboratory scale test that delivers a
stable performance over 500 charge and discharge cycles. Further, post-mortem analysis of the anodes after extended cycling by advanced electron microscopy shows a complete restructuring of the Si NWs into a porous network that is mechanically robust and highly stable. More importantly, these Si NWs on SSFC can be readily scaled up without compromising the structural integrity of the anode, which is highly desirable for practical batteries. This represents exciting progress for the realisation of high mass-loading Si NWs anode for nextgeneration high-capacity LIBs. This work is published in the high-impact journal Advanced Materials and has attracted significant national and international attention. The authors are from the Bernal Institute and Department of Chemical Sciences, UL.
Reference
Sumair Imtiaz, Ibrahim Saana Aminu, Dylan Storan, Nilotpal Kapuria, Hugh Geaney, Tadhg Kennedy, Kevin M Ryan (2021). Dense Silicon Nanowire Networks Grown on a Stainless-Steel F iber Cloth: A Flexible and Robust Anode for Lithium-Ion Batteries. Advanced Materials, December 29, 2021. Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris, Dr Marina Moraes Leite, Molecular & Nano Materials Cluster
Fig. 3 Schematic illustration of the synthesis procedure of Sn-seeded Si nanowire networks on a flexible stainless steel fibre cloth. The insets show the corresponding magnified SEM images of the plain stainless-steel fibre cloth, the stainless-steel fibre cloth with a coating of 25 nm of tin (Sn,), and the Si nanowire networks grown at 460°C.
