Royal Society Research Grant: Materials by Design
Dr. Aron Walsh has been awarded a
£100,000 research grant from the Royal Society to develop an "Integrated Approach for the Design
and Optimisation of Photoactive Materials". The grant will provide the infrastructure needed to
link materials simulations and experiment: a state-of-the-art chemical printer combined with a
high-performance computing cluster.
Inkjet printing is a low cost, scalable technology that is suitable for the synthesis of complex multi-component materials. Novel material compositions for visible light harvesting will be identified using quantum chemistry techniques, and grown and tested using a computer controlled synthesis procedure.
Once fully developed, this approach could result in the rapid discovery of new functional materials with applications ranging from microelectronics to catalysis.
The computer cluster will be housed in the new energy efficient water-cooled data centre in 5 West.
Dr Aron Walsh is a Whorrod Research Fellow, a post made possible by a £1m donation from University of Bath graduate Roger Whorrod.
