NANOPOLY

Hybrid Models for Tailoring Nano-Architectures of polymers

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The large scale production of commodity polymers is increasingly shifting overseas. Europe still plays a major role in polymer processing and product development, but the competition with the US and Asia requires distinctive efforts to sustain this leadership. Thus, it is decisive for European researchers and companies to design innovative, specialised commodities and optimise current production strategies. NANOPOLY’s main scientific objective is to further create, exchange and spread-out such know-how systematically within a European network in order to make this progress available and exploitable for European industries and coming generations of researchers. NANOPOLY will be unique in combining the strengths of applied mathematics/software engineering on the one hand and macro-molecular chemistry/reaction engineering on the other hand. These two sets of competences are currently rather unrelated but represent an important source of innovation for creating new models and associated software tools that permit new rational designs of polymer materials. NANOPOLY’s main training objective is the education of a new generation of researchers who are able to bridge the still significant gap between the two mentioned sets of competences. The job market urgently calls for researchers with suchlike sophisticated knowledge and interdisciplinary training. These prospects will make participation in the network a rewarding career option. Through superior training, intense cooperation, and outreach the network will build-up an exeptional multi-disciplinary, European-based community that is able to achieve the crucial transfer of knowledge between the associated fields and thus permit major innovation in improving technological processes that allow tailoring nano-architectures of polymers to specific requirements.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Nearly every field from biomedicine to astronomy relies heavily on the interplay between experiment and simulation to drive innovation. EU polymer science has received a turboboost thanks to work by an EU-funded multidisciplinary training network.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Although a cycle of modelling and experimentation is a well-established method to rapidly advance numerous fields, the multidisciplinary training required for a scientist to be able to do both is often lacking. Efficiency decreases when computer scientists without adequate knowledge of the specific field are recruited to do model development.

Polymer science is an important economic pillar of the EU, yet large-scale production of commodity polymers is increasingly shifting to overseas. To combat intense competition from Asia and the United States, an early training network was formed with EU support of the project 'Hybrid models for tailoring nano-architectures of polymers' (NANOPOLY).

The project combined the strengths of applied mathematics and software engineering with macromolecular chemistry and reaction engineering to educate a new generation of scientists who can bridge the gap. Training focused on the ability to develop advanced models and software tools to predict the effects of production processes on the nano-architecture of polymers. The tools will enable the design of processes and materials for high-quality products with tailor-made functions.

Some algorithms have been integrated into the commercial software platform PREDICI and experiments have been carried out to validate results. NANOPOLY's success is obvious in its publications in internationally renowned scientific journals as well as by the awards the doctoral theses have garnered and the positions the researchers have obtained.

The tools will form a lasting legacy, providing enhanced understanding of branching and cross-linking in polymer networks for rational production process design. The scientists themselves are valuable human capital, investment in whom ensures continued momentum and a leadership position for the EU in a huge global market sector.