Research Centre for Smart Materials
The UCLan Research Centre for Smart Materials is a network of researchers from across the University who focus on innovative and meaningful applications of smart materials – those that respond in a positive manner to their environment and changes to their environment.
These can be graphene, nanocomposites, films, fibres, biomaterials, alloys, and gels. We are engineers, designers, economists and material and social scientists. Our research address the major challenges for society in the areas of Energy, Environment, Healthcare, Mobility and Waste Management.
The network consists of engineers, designers and economists as well as material and social scientists assembled from academics in clinical and biomedical science, culture and creative industries, health, science and technology.
The application of our research and these materials will address the major challenges for society in key areas of:
What we do
Our approach provides a vibrant and active research environment that attracts a variety of external organisations, industry and other academic institutions to collaborate and benefit from our research activities.
We have established sponsorships for our research, formed collaborations and have a portfolio of public research seminars - details of which will be added to this page.
There are around 50 academics and postgraduate research students involved in our Centre. The Management team are:
- Professor Harry Eccles
- Professor Adrian Friend
- Claire Holt
- Dr Matthew Stables
- Professor Kamalinder Singh
- Dr Parthiv Kavi
- Dr Jorge Garcia-Lara
- Dr Karen Syres
Latest research
Robotic craft
Robotic Craft research into scaling up processes of high value manufacturing has generated innovative new material outputs and processes of making in which the new materials take on qualities of the new digital tools.
Ionic liquids
Ionic liquids are salts, composed solely of ions and held together by their strong Coulomb potential. We are researching how the unique properties of ionic liquids could transform industrial processes such as gas capture and separation, catalysis, corrosion protection, lubrication, batteries and photovoltaics.
Contact us
For further information contact Professor Harry Eccles and Professor Adrian Friend.