Biosensors enable high resolution detections for digital healthcare applications such as COVID-19 (link). Transferring bio-molecules into the sensing platform is the fundamental challenge to use biosensors for dianosis and drug discovery purposes. In addition, signal recognition for multi-species detection brings difficulties in medical diagnostics, mainly related to non-specific bindings (NSB). Microfluidic technology is one solution to facilitate a meticulous environment to control the interaction between antibodies and antigens. But currently the binding kinetic is understood using an idealised, 1:1 discrete model which is far too simplistic to fully characterize a microfluidic biosensor and to translate into commercial application, which is due to the lack of a fundamental understanding on the binding phenomenon. This project aims to build new guidelines based on multiscale approaches to understand binding kinetics and inform microfluidic technologies for the development of fast and reliable measurement techniques, tackling challenges associated with current technologies (link).

Electric vehicles (EVs) are powered by lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with many advantages such as high specific energy, long cycle life, wide range of operating temperature, and low self-discharge rates. There is a great interest to use EVs in substituting internal combustion engines considering the current crisis in climate change. EV manufacturers have been competing to enhance the power density of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) supporting the government policy to overcome the existing carbon emission crisis. However, the battery fire safety and performance have hindered such progress with detrimental impacts on the EV market. Typically, mechanical abuse (i.e., crush and vibration), electrical abuse (i.e., over-charge, over-discharge, short circuits) and thermal abuse (i.e., external heating and flame attack) are the main causes for failure of LIBs, where a large amount of energy stored can be discharged abruptly to heat leading to thermal runaway (TR) (link). In this regard, battery thermal management is crucial to improve fire safety, performance, and cycle life. This project aims to develop hybrid techniques based on smart materials to improve the thermal management systems in LIBs for EV technologies. Advanced functional materials, such as graphene-based (link) and nanomaterials will be explored to control the temperature of LIB modules.

Nanomaterials are considered as the central building blocks of a series of disruptive technologies and device concepts addressing a wide range of applications in nanoelectronics and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) such as mass spectrometers and biomedical and physical sensors. Size reduction enhances the surface contribution on the operational behaviour of nanoscale structures. Therefore, size-dependent physical behaviour is a primary challenge to use nanoscale devices into engineering applications. An example of such challenges was review on the size-dependent mechanical behaviour of nanowires (link). This project studies the size effect in the operational behaviour of nanostructures such as nanoporous materials (link), 1D architectures such as nanowires (link) and 2D materials (link). This project employs characterization techniques assisted by multiscale modelling approaches to understand the physical properties of nanoscale materials and their reliable during operational performance.