Keynote Speaker Professor Andrew Cooper, PhD
9:30 - 10:15 Monday 22 September
StepChange in Materials Discovery - Directions and Drivers
Andrew Cooper, PhD
Abstract
There is a major societyâ€driven need to develop new functional materials and this activity is likely to be of key importance, for example, in a future UK "knowledge economy". Key drivers here include environmental considerations (e.g., renewable feedstocks, new materials for energy storage), product differentiation (e.g., new electronic materials, enhanced consumer products) and healthcare (e.g., drug delivery, tissue engineering scaffolds). In each of these areas there is a need to take a longâ€term "step change" view in order to remain competitive. This lecture will explore some of these themes and will also focus on new discovery methods - such as the use of parallel robotic synthesis methods (www.materialsdiscovery.com) to greatly accelerate the
development of new materials.
Specific areas covered in this lecture will include:
• Supercritical fluid solvents as clean reaction / processing media
• High throughput discovery of porous materials for gas storage applications
• Synthesis of functional nanomaterials
The discussion will focus particularly on the benefit of combining new discovery tools (e.g., robotics, microwave irradiation) with adventurous concepts and hypotheses in materials design.
Recent Publications
(1) Formation and enhanced biocidal activity of waterâ€dispersable organic nanoparticles. H. Zhang, D.
Wang, R. Butler, N.L. Campbell, J. Long, B. Tan, D.J. Duncalf, A.J. Foster, A. Hopkinson, D. Taylor, D. Agnus,
A.I. Cooper, S.P. Rannard. Nature Nano., 2008, 3 (80), 506â€511
(2) Synthetic control of pore dimension and surface area in conjugated microporous polymer and
copolymer networks. Jâ€X. Jiang, F. Su, A. Trewin, C.D. Wood, H. Niu, J.T.A. Jones, Y.Z. Khimyak, A.I.
Cooper. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2008, 130 (24), 7710â€7722
(3) Freezeâ€align and heatâ€fuse: Producing microwires from nanoparticle suspensions. H. Zhang, Jâ€Y. Lee,
A. Ahmed, I. Hussain, A.I. Cooper. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2008, 47, 4573â€4576
Director of the Centre for Materials Discovery and Head of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool, U.K.
Environmental conservation and declining fossil fuels are two of many external drivers that are influencing the direction of research in Professor Cooper's main fields of interest. His presentation will provide delegates with an exciting insight into the future of Materials Development.
Andrew Cooper is a graduate of the University of Nottingham (1991), obtaining his PhD there in 1994 for the study of organometallic reaction mechanisms at low temperatures and high pressures with Professor Martyn Poliakoff, CBE. After his PhD, he held a 1851 Fellowship and a Royal Society NATO Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, working with Professor Joseph M. DeSimone on polymerisation reactions and phase transfer processes in supercritical CO2 (1995-1997). He then held a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellowship at the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis in Cambridge, working with Professor Andrew B. Holmes on polymerisation in supercritical CO2 (1997-1999). In 1998, he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and joined Liverpool in January 1999, where he now holds a Personal Chair. Professor Cooper is currently the Head of the Department for Chemistry at the University of Liverpool and Founding Director of the Centre for Materials Discovery, established in 2007. www.materialsdiscovery.com
Andrew Cooper's main research interests include polymeric materials, supercritical fluids, microporous materials, hydrogen storage, metal nanoparticles, organometallics, emulsion-templated materials. His is particularly interested in functional materials - for example, nanoporous polymers for gas storage and his direction of the Centre for Materials Discovery is leading pioneering high-throughput "combinatorial" materials methodology to accelerate the materials discovery process.