The 2008 Advanced Materials Report

NI has Advanced Materials capability which is seen to underpin all sectors ranging from Agrifood to Aerospace. However, the quantity of R&D in NI is not sufficient for the range and size of sectors within the region. The analysis of the industrial and academic strengths shows that a rich focus area for NI is the convergence area between traditional material sectors and a focus on the interdisciplinary and multidiscipline areas of advanced materials.

Specifically these areas would be:

• Biomaterials;
• Nanostructured Materials;
• Multifunctional Materials (including catalysis);
• Composites; and
• Computational Science.

In these areas NI is demonstrating established competency to be globally significant in these areas and to create a niche leadership focus within the UK, Europe and the world.

Additionally, there is an emerging global sector, which utilises the multidisciplinary skills of these focus areas to produce new break-through solutions to existing common themes in all sectors. This emerging sector presents a grand challenge to Advanced Materials and Engineering in NI and is called Cleantech.