Department of Engineering

EPSRC research highlights of the last 10 years

5 October 2005

The Department's Professor Mark Welland is featured in the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC) celebration of 10 years of reporting on the best research in engineering and the physical sciences.

Professor Welland has been a driving force behind advances in materials that exploit nano-scale properties. He and his colleagues have explored the mechanical, optical and electronic properties of atoms and molecules and grown them into nanostructures by seeding them onto a surface. These structures then intertwine in a form of self-assembly creating a series of different materials and structures that retain their nano-scale properties.

"The achievement has been not in manipulating a single atom but in growing several square centimetres of a novel material," comments Professor Welland. For instance, the team have produced a nano-material that is super-hydrophobic (repels water) which could be scaled up into a coating for car windscreens that might mean you would never need windscreen wipers.

Read more on the EPSRC website.

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