Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering

Role(s): Academic , Associate (Professor)

Qualifications

Biography

Hydrogen systems in particular hydrogen storage technology, including the preparation and processing of novel materials, materials characterisation and the testing/validation of materials.

Nanostructured materials

Current research

My current research interests include:

Solid state hydrogen storage materials - light metal hydrides, complex hydrides, nanostructured carbon and metal organic frameworks (MOFs)

Biomaterials – degradable composites, bioactive coatings

Nanostructured carbons – CNTs and GNFs

Nanostructured coatings – PVD, CVD and sol-gel.

Hydrogen Storage has become the main focus of my activities. I am a partner in the UK Research Councils’ Supergen hydrogen consortium UKSHEC, is involved in EU FP6 projects (Hytrain and HyCones) and am a UK expert for the International Energy Agency’s Tasks 17 and 22 (both on hydrogen storage materials). A new collaboration was established earlier in 2006 with the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology. The research is investigating novel routes to improve the cycling kinetics and thermodynamics for high capacity materials and studying the interaction of hydrogen with nanostructured adsorbents.

Biomaterial research includes investigation of novel sol-gel and PVD coatings to improve the biocompatibility of surfaces. I also have interests in degradable phosphate glass fibre reinforced composites and tailoring the degradation properties of these materials.

Future research

There is great interest in producng high capacity hydrogen storage materials with fast kinetics. Our work into hydrogen storage materials looks to continue this investigation and to begin investigating the engineering of hydrogen systems based on solid state storage technology.

For Biocomposites, the interface between the glass reinforcement and the polymer matrix is key in controlling the evolving properties of a degrading composite and future work will focus on investigating this.

Expertise summary

Hydrogen systems in particular hydrogen storage technology, including the preparation and processing of novel materials, materials characterisation and the testing/validation of materials.

Nanostructured materials

Lay summary

Media summary