Enabling The Future-An International Review of UK Materials Science and Technology

摘要

The United Kingdom engineering and science research council (EPSRC) is conducting a series of reviews to provide a benchmark against which its research and training portfolio can be measured and compared, on an international basis. This article reports on the review of the standing and potential of materials research in the UK and attempts to provide a comparison with materials research internationally. The materials programme currently has a portfolio of research grants and training awards worth approximately 139M pounds (grants and training awards extend typically over three years - the annual spend figures are 34M pounds on research; 8M pounds on training). Significant funding enters departments other than materials science and metallurgy, especially physics and chemistry. The core programme focuses on end use, which may be long term and speculative. The programme supports the complete range of structural materials [polymers (17 percent), metals (18 percent), ceramics (12 percent)] and functional materials for specific applications, photonics (21 percent), electronics (19 percent), magnetics (6 percent) and superconductors (7 percent)], underpinned by synthesis/growth, characterization, processing and modeling. Materials research is also supported outside of the materials programme; notably, biomaterials and some aspects of the processing of structural materials, are both supported through the engineering programme.