15th August 2001

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A pioneering research team at the University of Ulster is to receive a research grant in excess of £130,000 from the Industrial Research and Technology Unit to explore new ways of changing the surface qualities and properties of materials, including plastics, metals and textiles.

The research, funded by IRTU's Start Programme, will last for 24 months, and build on work already in progress at the University's Northern Ireland Centre for Advanced Materials TDP initiative at the Coleraine campus. The Centre's aim is to bring together scientific and engineering expertise to enable local industry to compete in the international marketplace.

The results could have a significant impact on the way many everyday products are manufactured - and their cost. The research team, led by Professor Norman Brown, is developing a new atmospheric pressure cold plasma technology that could cut production costs in for example, the textile and polymer industries by superseding today's much more expensive vacuum-based plasma processing options.

"A plasma is an incandescent energy rich gas - it's most commonly encountered as the inside of a fluorescent tube. The gas glows because of the energy being dissipated through it," explained Prof Brown.

"Subjecting a material to a particular plasma treatment can radically alter its surface qualities - for example, making textiles or papers more resistant to soiling or wetting, more generally, for improving adhesion, or simply making a material easier to clean.

"Normally, if you run a plasma process in air at atmospheric pressure, the plasma will get hot. The trouble with that is that it may then melt or burn the material you're trying to treat. The traditional answer has been to run such plasmas in low pressure, vacuum systems.

"Our new system, even though it is a plasma at atmospheric pressure, does not get hot. So you get all the benefits of the reactive nature of the plasma, without any of the damage potential.

"And because you're not working in a vacuum, the engineering is much simpler and less expensive - and it's easy to see how our system could work in a continuous manufacturing process.

"In contrast, while vacuum plasmas can work as part of a continuous process, the equipment required is complex and expensive to construct and maintain," Professor Brown added.

The new system could have important uses across industry including - because it also can sterilises the materials it treats - the biomedical sector.

The grant will be used to build a lab-scale test facility, which will explore how the new plasma technology can be integrated into continuous manufacturing processes like those in the polymer, paper, textiles and printing industries. As part of the project, the University will demonstrate the manufacturing possibilities to Northern Ireland businesses.

IRTU's Director of Innovation Services, David Duncan, said:

"This exemplar project will have significant benefits for Northern Ireland manufacturing. Disseminating research from the universities to business is one of the best ways of increasing the competitiveness of Northern Ireland industry.

"This nanotechnology project will be of benefit to a large number of industries and will enable Northern Ireland to better compete on the world market. IRTU is pleased to be able to aid this groundbreaking research."

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk