Beyond Phononic Crystals-Building New Concepts to Enhance Thermoelectricity. Waste heat, which is discharged into the environment from industrial plants and vehicle exhausts, represents a huge amount of lost energy and is a major contributor to global warming. Thermoelectric materials, which can generate electricity from the waste heat, could play an important role in a global sustainable energy solution while reducing greenhouse emissions. This program is aimed at experimental and theoretical d ....Beyond Phononic Crystals-Building New Concepts to Enhance Thermoelectricity. Waste heat, which is discharged into the environment from industrial plants and vehicle exhausts, represents a huge amount of lost energy and is a major contributor to global warming. Thermoelectric materials, which can generate electricity from the waste heat, could play an important role in a global sustainable energy solution while reducing greenhouse emissions. This program is aimed at experimental and theoretical development of new concepts to engineer the interfaces with various atomic stacking sequence of two complex oxides and also the three-dimensional binary nanocube superlattices to enhance the energy conversion efficiency of oxide based thermoelectric materials by several times over today's state-of-the-art.Read moreRead less
Growing a multi-scale internal structure: new wrought metals for energy conservation. This research aims to reduce the weight of wrought metal parts so that transport and machinery will use less energy. It will establish how to grow novel multi-scale internal structures and will thereby pioneer a new class of metals that display superior properties.
Functional carbon composites to power a sustainable future. This project aims to address the limitation of current energy storage technologies though the development of functional carbon-based materials for the next generation of energy storage systems with high capacity, high energy/power density, excellent retention and low cost. The progress of energy storage technology plays a critical role in the development of portable devices in daily life. This project will synthesise a series of carbon- ....Functional carbon composites to power a sustainable future. This project aims to address the limitation of current energy storage technologies though the development of functional carbon-based materials for the next generation of energy storage systems with high capacity, high energy/power density, excellent retention and low cost. The progress of energy storage technology plays a critical role in the development of portable devices in daily life. This project will synthesise a series of carbon-based composites via an electrospinning method, and their properties will be assessed and characterised as electrode materials for high performance energy storage devices.Read moreRead less
Bio-inspired electro catalysts for gas reduction reactions: towards electrochemical ammonia production under ambient conditions. This project will develop solutions to replace the current energy inefficient method for ammonia production, which are a significant contribution to Greenhouse Gas emissions. A more energy efficient system will be developed from a new class of composite gas-reduction catalysts integrated into functional electrochemical cells.
Novel energy-efficient electrowinning anodes. Developed nations rely extensively on metallic materials to sustain modern society. This places a significant importance on delivery of base metals, and that delivery must be as efficient and clean as possible. The first step in the delivery chain is extraction from the ore, and much of this technology is based on electrowinning (EW), where the behaviour of the anode is critical to overall process efficiency. This project will deliver advances in EW ....Novel energy-efficient electrowinning anodes. Developed nations rely extensively on metallic materials to sustain modern society. This places a significant importance on delivery of base metals, and that delivery must be as efficient and clean as possible. The first step in the delivery chain is extraction from the ore, and much of this technology is based on electrowinning (EW), where the behaviour of the anode is critical to overall process efficiency. This project will deliver advances in EW anodes which will lead to energy savings, which in turn, will result in a cleaner overall production cycle, major emission reductions and cost savings. The expected outcomes of this project are targeted at the development of new and advanced anode materials.Read moreRead less
Development of Novel Spin Caloritronic Materials and Devices for Heat Management in Nanoelectronic Systems. Spin caloritronics is a new field that combines concepts from spintronics and thermoelectricity. This project is inspired by spin Seebeck effect observed in magnetic insulators and motivated by the basic requirements of nanoscale heat management devices. Such devices are the key components promising to surmount fundamental limits of microelectronic technologies with heat dissipation and p ....Development of Novel Spin Caloritronic Materials and Devices for Heat Management in Nanoelectronic Systems. Spin caloritronics is a new field that combines concepts from spintronics and thermoelectricity. This project is inspired by spin Seebeck effect observed in magnetic insulators and motivated by the basic requirements of nanoscale heat management devices. Such devices are the key components promising to surmount fundamental limits of microelectronic technologies with heat dissipation and power consumption as the size of charge-based logic devices shrinks into nanometre scale. This program is aimed at experimental and theoretical development of novel spin caloritronic materials with spin Seebeck effect at ambient temperature, which is orders of magnitude higher than state-of-the-art materials, for heat management in nanoelectronic systems.Read moreRead less
A New Approach to Advanced Steels via Cluster and Precipitate Strengthening. Formation of interphase nanoparticles and clusters is a new approach to increase strength in advanced high strength steels. Exceptionally high strength levels can be achieved in alloys that only have solute clusters by controlling the temperature-time history. However, the exact mechanism for the formation of clusters and precipitates and the cluster strengthening mechanism are not understood, nor do we know how to cont ....A New Approach to Advanced Steels via Cluster and Precipitate Strengthening. Formation of interphase nanoparticles and clusters is a new approach to increase strength in advanced high strength steels. Exceptionally high strength levels can be achieved in alloys that only have solute clusters by controlling the temperature-time history. However, the exact mechanism for the formation of clusters and precipitates and the cluster strengthening mechanism are not understood, nor do we know how to control cluster formation. This project aims to develop a fundamental understanding of the formation of clusters and nanoprecipitates and determine their contribution to strengthening and other mechanical properties using advanced characterisation techniques such as atom probe tomography and electron microscopy.Read moreRead less
Advanced high strength steels produced by energy efficient direct strip casting. Over one billion tonnes of steel is produced every year and one method of reducing the environmental footprint of this production is through strip casting. This process reduces the energy required to process liquid steel into thin sheet product by an astounding 90 per cent. This proposal aims to expand the application of this technology to new steel grades.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE110100183
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$840,000.00
Summary
A comprehensive magneto-thermophysical property measurement system for the development of advanced materials, energy and biomedical technologies. This facility will add a new dimension to high-level research performance and will significantly enhance our ability to investigate different types of materials. The continual development of advanced materials will potentially provide a sustainable means for meeting the increasing global challenge for the materials, energy and biomedical industries.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE110100229
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$230,000.00
Summary
Carbon-free high temperature vacuum sintering facility. This facility will provide an extremely clean sintering environment for development of advanced materials free from imperfections for applications which range from energy conversion to medical components. It will ensure that Australia is an important international leader in both fundamental research and industrial innovation.