It's A Material World

Can we live without plastics? A lot of the current publicity looks very negative, and there are certainly problems. There seems to be waste everywhere and micro-plastics are becoming a big problem. How did we get to this position? What can we as a society do? What are scientists and engineers doing? Our research focuses on sustainable chemistry and finding clean ways to make plastics and even to develop new materials from Nature that could degrade safely.
Steve is also the singer in a rock band (@ramshackle_men) and plays football in the East Midlands Veteran League (Beeston Old Boys FC).

Discarded cigarette butts are a major waste disposal and environmental pollution hazard. Every year nearly six trillion cigarettes are smoked worldwide, generating 800,000 metric tons of cigarette butts. We have discovered that cigarette butt-derived carbons may be good for hydrogen storage, which may not only address an intractable environmental pollution problem – cigarette butts – but also turn a major waste product towards clean energy production.

Lithium-ion batteries have delivered a revolution in portable electronics and have begun to unlocked electrification of the UK automotive industry, which employs over 800,000 people and has an annual turnover of £77.5B. Here we will explore how fundamental research and materials discovery is being used to develop the next-generation of battery technologies able to meet our future needs in the aerospace and automotive sectors. A perspective of the challenge will be presented by considering next-generation batteries in the context of the needs of industry and society.