Latest Events

A free one-hour tour of the Royce Institute's 12T Wide Bore Magnet Facility in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

The wide bore magnet is a 12T solenoid fitted with a VTI with a 100mm usable bore supplied by Oxford Innovative Cryogenic Engineering. Temperature control is possible from 325K to < 2K . The system will have a field homogeneity of 0.05% over a 1cm DSV and 0.5% over a 4cm DSV. The system is entirely cryo-cooler operated with a He gas filled cooling loop. The VTI will operate in static, dynamic and one-shot modes.

This system is intended to facilitate materials characterisation and process development across the full range of Royce areas. While the system is provided with a generic fixed sample probe and a 100 A transport probe technical support will be available to exploit the large internal bore of this magnet by designing custom measurement probes. A wide range of standard laboratory equipment is available in the host laboratory to use in conjunction with this system.

This system is ideal for facilitating developments in processing of mesoscopally ordered materials, superconductors and low loss high permeability materials.

This tour will give an overview of the capabilities of the Wide Bore Magnet Facility as well as information on booking, funding opportunities and the work of the Royce Institute.

For more information about Royce Facilities at Cambridge please contact royce@maxwell.cam.ac.uk and see our full equipment listing at: https://www.maxwell.cam.ac.uk/programmes/henry-royce-institute

Climate change is a topic often at the forefront of discussions across the spectrum of academic subjects and we often hear technology blamed for its negative contributions. But could technology also have a positive role to play? 

In this set of talks we hear from experts in the field of sustainable tech who are working to use the powers of technology and artificial intelligence to improve our understanding of climate change, and maybe help turn the tides for the better.

Harvesting from the Solar Spectrum

Georgie Burgoyne Morris (PhD student at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge)

The rapidly emerging climate crisis has highlighted the urgency of developing effective renewable energy sources, of which solar power is a key example. However, many existing solar cells only make efficient use of a small portion of the solar spectrum. The use of spectral converters, either in downshifting high-energy light or upconverting low-energy light, allows the solar spectrum to be tuned to allow more efficient energy harvesting. This talk will explore different types of spectral conversion, and the materials challenges involved in effectively implementing these technologies.

Air Pollution & AI: Understanding the Risks and Impact

Michelle Wan (PhD student at the University of Cambridge)

Air pollution affects both our climate and our health. In this talk, Michelle shares two examples of machine learning methods which can help us better understand pollution risks and their health impacts. In the first example, they use smart algorithms to fill in missing data when air quality monitoring sensors break. In the second example, they combine this environmental data with information about wealth and poverty to predict health outcomes.

Speaker: Professor Patrick Grant FREng, Department of Materials, Oxford University, UK

Since the invention of the Li ion battery more than 30 years ago, there have been steady improvements in performance such as energy and power density. However the most dramatic change has been the reduction in cost per unit energy stored due to manufacturing innovations, which have reduced costs by more than an order of magnitude. While costs continue to reduce, albeit more slowly, battery performance is beginning to stagnate. However, this plateau of performance is disappointingly well-below the intrinsic energy storage performance of the active cathode and anode materials that comprise the Li ion battery. The root of the performance plateau is the ubiquitous method of creating the electrodes, which although highly productive, constrains the range structures and performance that can be achieved. This talk explores novel ways of producing electrodes used in Li ion and Na ion that have structures that allow the intrinsic energy storage capabilities of materials to be realised more fully. For example, we have developed manufacturing techniques that provide extra control on how a polymeric binder distributes during the drying of a slurry cast Li ion battery electrode, how to eliminate organic solvents used in electrode processing, and how to mix optimally different active materials in a single electrode. By improving microstructural control, battery performance is enhanced, and the design space for battery electrode architectures and performance is widened. Because design options are increased, trial and error electrode optimisation by experiment typical of the battery industry becomes impossible. Therefore, the use of modelling and simulation becomes essential, both to understand the electrochemical behaviour of our smart hetero-electrodes and to guide the microstructural design of electrodes for a particular balance of desired properties.

Speaker profile:

Patrick Grant is the Vesuvius Professor of Materials and Pro Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Oxford. His research takes place at the interface between advanced materials and manufacturing. Particular applications include electrodes for energy storage, advanced metallics for efficient power generation, and multi-material additive manufacturing. He leads one of the UK Faraday Institution’s major research programmes on smart Li ion electrode manufacture and is the manufacturing lead for the Faraday Institution’s research programme on solid-state batteries. He was head of the Department of Materials (2015-18) and has been Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research since 2018. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010, was Chair of Rolls-Royce’s Scientific Advisory Committee (2019-22) and is a director of Oxford University Innovation Ltd, Oxford University’s technology transfer company.

Online link https://zoom.us/j/96836714124.

A free one-hour tour of the capabilities of the Royce Institute's Electrical Characterisation Suite within the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Discover more about this open access equipment and Royce funding opportunities for your research.

This equipment can be used to characterise devices in detail both at wafer level and in packaged form enabling the enhancement of product performance.

This suite includes: a Cascade Tesla, 200 mm, high voltage, high current semiautomatic probe station, a Keysight B1505A Semiconductor Parametric Analyser/Curve Tracer, number of stand-alone, high precision Source Measure Units (SMUs) and a high voltage capable, Keysight 2 GHz Oscilloscope.

This set of equipment allows testing and characterisation of devices and materials in wafer, die or packaged forms, very accurately from -55 °C to +300 °C. Ratings of the equipment are up to 200 A and 3 kV for wafer level measurements using the probe station and 0.01 fA to 1500 A and 10 kV for packaged samples. B1505A also has C-V capability from 1 kHz to 5 MHz with a combined DC voltage rating of 3 kV. The oscilloscope with the high voltage probe can capture switching transients up to 4 kV.

For more information about Royce Facilities at Cambridge please contact royce@maxwell.cam.ac.uk and see our full equipment listing at: https://www.maxwell.cam.ac.uk/programmes/henry-royce-institute

A free one-hour tour of the Royce Institute's Ambient Processing Cluster Tool Facility in the Maxwell Centre at the University of Cambridge.

The Royce Institute's Ambient Processing Cluster Tool is a custom-built glovebox cluster tool that integrates different vacuum and liquid-based deposition technologies for a wide range of functional materials into a common inert glove box atmosphere. It comprises ten glove box modules that are interconnected by a semi-automated inert atmosphere transfer system and includes Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD), Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), Aerosol Jet Printing, Slot Die Coating, Organic Thermal Evaporator, Perovskite/Hybrid Evaporator, as well as modules for metrology, thin film encapsulation and packaging.

This open access tool can be used by both academia and industry and gives access to a wide range of functional materials, including transition metal oxides for battery and other applications, organic and hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductors, two-dimensional materials, polymer composites and other associated materials.

Its unique configuration allows integration of these different classes of materials into novel hetero-architectures and but also fabrication of a wide range of devices including solar cells, batteries, mechanical or thermoelectric energy harvesters as well as integrated energy systems for energy–efficient ICT applications.

This tour will give an overview of the capabilities of the Ambient Processing Cluster Tool as well as information on booking, funding opportunities and the work of the Royce Institute.

Additionally tours of the Royce Magnetic Property Management System and the High Vacuum and Environmental XPS will also be taking place at this time at the Maxwell Centre. If you're interested please book a tour for these facilities here;

Magnetic Property Management System https://app.tickettailor.com/events/roycecambridge/1202721

Environmental XPS and the High Vacuum XPS https://app.tickettailor.com/events/roycecambridge/1202754

For more information about Royce Facilities at Cambridge please contact royce@maxwell.cam.ac.uk and see our full equipment listing at: https://www.maxwell.cam.ac.uk/programmes/henry-royce-institute