Dr Donna Arnold funded for two projects on functional polar materials by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratories and Global Challenges Research Funding.
Congratulations to Dr Donna Arnold on the recent award of two funded research projects linked to her work on functional polar solids. Both of these will be carried out by PhD students jointly supervised by Dr Arnold.
The first of these is a student lead project funded by the University of Kent’s Global Challenges Doctoral Centre funded by United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) to carry out research vital to the needs to developing countries. The student involved in this work is Charlotte Byford, who will be co-supervised by Dr Robert Barker from the Supramolecular, Interfacial and Synthetic Chemistry (SISC) group. The project will focus on the development of piezoelectric materials for water purification. Piezoelectric materials are widely used in a range of applications, from timing elements in watches to electric lighters for their ability to accumulate charge in response to mechanical stress, with applications in water purification a new and exciting area for these well established materials.
The second project is for a PhD student to work on antiferroelectrics for power storage. Antiferroelectrics, have low polarisation under weak electric fields but high polarisation under strong electrics fields. This enables these new exciting energy storage materials to offer high power densities and fast charge and discharge rates which are promising for pulsed power applications and offer a way to store energy from renewable energy sources. This project will be carried out collaboratively with Professor Oliver Mentre from the University of Lille and is funded by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratories as part of an agreement with the French government. This PhD will be advertised shortly for interested applicants.