This video focuses on the Engineering side of Functional Materials Research at the University of Exeter: Functional materials research focuses on the design and fabrication of novel materials, the understanding, via modelling and experimental characterisation, of their physical properties and their exploitation for a range of real-world applications; from electronic, magnetic and optical memories, to energy storage, to medical diagnosis, to high-strength composites and much more. See our websites: Functional Materials (Engineering) - emps.exeter.ac.uk Centre for Graphene Science - emps.exeter.ac.uk Functional Materials Science Strategy - www.exeter.ac.uk.
Transcript
00:00:00 [Music] as a top ranking institution the University of exitor is leading the way in many exciting areas of scientific and Engineering research none more so than the pioneering field of functional materials functional materials are defined as anything that any material that does not have just a loadbearing function like for example concrete has
00:00:29 just a load bearing function whereas silicon is a functional material and it's used everywhere in your laptop on your iPhone and practically any electronic devices that you use at exitor the study of functional materials is very much an interdisciplinary field where research explores the design and Fabrication of materials for the purpose of practical application we have about
00:00:53 four research groups as well as the graphine center within functional materials so it's a phenomenally large area of research within the university and in engineering specifically We Carry Out research in nanop photonics nanome mechanics data storage as well as in nanomaterials whether physics engineering or medical related exitor worldclass research in functional
00:01:17 materials has attracted a great deal of funding the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the development of this Magneto Optical device a portable kit that quickly detects malaria using magne IC fields and Technology similar to that used in a DVD player this um device that we've uh developed diagnose malaria by detecting crystals which are produced by the Malia
00:01:46 parasit using um an optical beam and a magnetic field to align the crystals well this is a good example of the interdisciplinary work we do at exit in that it mixes various areas of research as as uh Optical uh engineering um magnetic research as well as medical um uh research with state-of-the-art materials Labs it technology and specialist clean rooms that support
00:02:15 fabrication characterization and Testing Research students have access to the very best of facilities they're also actively encouraged to discuss new ideas with academic supervisors and pursue their own areas of Interest they are literally helping me every day and but at the same time I have the freedom to do my own research and do the things that I really wanted to do so I can
00:02:40 literally go uh to one of the office and start uh throwing ideas about something that I've found on a newspaper on a conference and they can say yes maybe start collaborating with these guys or uh go to another department start start do the experiment that you want to do and I think that's that's very he very supportive to encourage us to share ideas with others to enter and
00:03:07 attend conference so we have all of us have already attended conference and we are going to attend conference abroad very soon with an enviable international reputation functional materials at exitor has very strong industry Partnerships most of our research funding is jointly bid with the industrial partners for for instance uh a project called protm which was looking
00:03:33 at data storage devices in future had three industrial Partners within it and many of the post-graduate students who actually worked on this project got opportunities to intern and work at these industrial Partners as part of my PhD training I had a chance to work with the IBM zri in the research center in Switzerland and I had the chance to spoke with the people who literally were
00:03:59 the p in the nanotechnology um science and uh I made some useful contacts for for my future from data storage to disease diagnosis functional materials will help the world face a multitude of challenges and opportunities with its world-class facilities and interdisciplinary research expertise the University of exitor is leading the way
