This work centres on the development of new procedures for consolidating powder layers using lasers for application in additive manufacturing.

The focus of the project is to research the design, additive manufacturing and characterisation of neuromorphic and neural network architectures.

The project focuses on developing a novel manufacturing method for high resolution digital patterning of functional materials for low volume manufacture of sensors using inkjet printing and laser ablation. The manufacturing challenges and future capability of the hybrid technology will also be researched.

The project focuses on eliminating the anode’s contribution to outgassing and plasma formation caused by the near surface ionization of the outgassed neutral atoms by the desorbed electrons, thus increasing the lowest achievable pressure in vacuum electronics devices improving their efficiency.

Laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing is an industrially attractive technology due to the geometric freedom in part design and the ability to manufacture components with structures impossible to achieve via conventional machining techniques. The process is unfortunately slow and plagued with defects due to the non deterministic nature of the laser powder interaction. A novel multi beam arrangement has been developed to investigate different conduction mode beam scanning strategies for scaling towards high throughput manufacture.

New optical technologies increase the demands on the engineering specifications of optical surfaces, with manufacturing specifications of up to 1nm RMS form accuracy and 0.1nm RMS surface finish. To achieve these fabrication requirements novel ultra-precision methods must be developed. The proposed solution is microwave generated activate plasma figuring.

The aim is to develop the understanding of RAP technology to etch metals, such as Ti64, at atmospheric pressure

Biolaser is an IfM and NIAB collaboration which aims to develop a laser ablation tomography platform that provides rapid, 3D imaging of plant material down to micron or even sub-micron resolutions.

High quality drug screening is essential for time and cost-efficient drug discovery and future personalized medicine. Key missing features of commercially available screening solutions are (a) the lack of a human-like 3D tissue microenvironment and the complex organization of multiple cells into organ tissue (organoids) to simulate proper organ function and (b) an understanding of the behaviour of such soft materials. This project contributes to the latter issue by developing a highly reliable method achieving high repeatability in measuring the elastic modulus of a phantom soft material in a 3D printed structure (specifically hydrogel).

In the 3D nanomagnetic paradigm, new physics phenomena such as new types of domain wall, 3D spin texture and dynamic effects have a great potential leading to new functionalities which will find application in fields such as sensing, actuating, information storage and ‘internet of things’.