EPSRC Summer Internship in Thin Films lab

Join us this summer on MECHANOFLEX an exciting research internship exploring cuttingedge materials for the future of electrical insulation. Over 10 weeks youll gain handson lab experience in thinfilm deposition and mechanical testing helping develop flexible ceramic coatings that could transform highperformance electrical machines and power electronics. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to realworld research grow your technical and scientific skills and work within a worldclass university environment.

Project Title:MECHANOFLEX: Testing MECHanical performance of thinfilm AlN coatings fOr FLEXible electrical insulation applications

Project Duration: 10 weeks
Start Date:Monday 23 June 2025
End Date:Friday 19 September 2025
Working Hours: 36.25 hours over 5 days.You are expected to work such hours as are necessary to fulfil your role with 36.25hours being the notional requirement for the working week. To enable flexibility to meet organisational priorities there are no specified hours of work although you are required to attend by arrangement with the Project Supervisor or designated person at such times as may be necessary for the proper discharge of all your duties in the University. You will be required to take an unpaid meal break of at least hour if you work continuously for more than five hours on any working day. However if you work a full day i.e. 7.25 hours you should take an unpaid meal break of one hour.
Pay Rate:12.50 per hour plus holidy pay

Location: University park campus (Wolfson ITRC and nmRC buildings)
Dress Code:lab coat safety glasses nitrile gloves steelite protector work boot

The duties will include:

• Engage with project teams to define project requirements
• Lab work: thin film deposition materials characterisation and testing
• Write up project as a report and prepare a presentation

Skills and experience required for the role:

• Predicted degree grade 2:1 or above.
• Registered for an undergraduate degree in a subject that falls within the EPSRC remit namely in chemistry engineering materials and physics.
• In the middle years of their degree. Students in their final year who will have completed their degree by the summer are ineligible.
• Effective oral and written skills in order to communicate effectively with staff and colleagues.
• Good English language skills.

What you can expect to gain during this role:

• This internship is a students opportunity to obtain practical firsthand experience of working on and carrying out groundbreaking materials research in a UK university.
• This project will build nextgeneration thinking and practical skills for the student on preparation of novel thin film materials and their characterisation for advanced electrical insulation applications.

Widening Participation Criteria

Please note that candidates must fulfil at least one of the following criteria:

Identify as having Black Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) ethnicity

Identify their gender as being female or nonbinary

Be in receipt of a University of Nottingham core bursaryor Nottingham Potential bursary

Have a declared disability

Most recent school or college was a state school i.e. not a private school

Be a mature student 21 or over at the start of their undergraduate course)

Have spent more than three months in local authority care

Be under 25 and estranged from their family

Be a carer

Have refugee status from the Home Office

The home address used on their UCASapplication is in an area where people are less likely to go to university*

* Students cancheck their postcode hereto see if this criteria applies to them

Project Description

MECHANOFLEX aims to systematically investigate the influence of film thickness on the fracture behaviour adhesion strength and mechanical flexibility of thinfilm aluminium nitride (AlN) coatings generating critical insights into their structural integrity and enabling their application in nextgeneration flexible electrical insulation.

Background
My recent studies indicate that advanced thinfilm ceramic coatings of AlN have the potential to revolutionise electrical insulation in power electronics (PE) and electrical machine (EM) engineering owing to the ability of this inorganic material to withstand extremely high temperatures exceptionally high dielectric breakdown strength >1kV/m) and thermal conductivity (up to 290 W/mK) 1. With superior electrically insulating and heat dissipating properties the ceramic coatings can replace conventional organic electrical insulation and enable EMs and PE units to operate at previously inaccessibly high temperatures >500C) power densities and voltages to achieve maximum efficiency required by the nextgeneration electrification technologies.

Our preliminary simulations indicate that these innovative hightemperature ceramic coatings could improve the power density of an industrial motor by 50 if used as insulation of magnet wires a major engineering breakthrough 1. This enhancement would be particularly transformative in aerospace (aircraft drones satellites) where the efficiency light weight compactness and reliability of motors generators and actuators under extreme conditions are crucial.

However the brittle nature of ceramics has traditionally restricted their use to rigid components. Inspired by the improved strength of glass fibres compared to bulk glass this project explores whether thinfilm processing can similarly enable AlN to function as a mechanically robust yet flexible electrical insulator.

Objectives

1. Fabricate adherent AlN coatings on copper (Cu) substrates with graded/blended adhesion interlayers (Weeks 14.
2. Experimentally test the mechanical performance of AlN coatings of varying thickness 30nm50m) (Weeks 29.
3. Establish correlations between coating thickness and mechanical performance and compile results into a final report (Week 10.

Methods
Ten batches of AlN coatings will be deposited via pulsed DC magnetron sputtering (TEER UDP650 onto flexible Cu substrates. Coating thicknesses will be verified using stylus profilometry (KLA Tencor D120 Nano). Hardness will be characterised by nanoindentation (Micro Materials NanoTest P3 and adhesion will be assessed via pulloff tests (PAThandy DFD Instruments) and scratch testing (CETR UMT). To evaluate flexibility insitu twopoint bending and fatigue tests will be performed on the ceramic coatings deposited on flexible Cu foil using a motorised tensile/compression bending stage (Deben Microtest MT200. The onset of cracking and delamination will be observed via optical microscopy. The minimum bending radius will be defined by conforming the samples to steel cylinders with variable radii. Posttest characterisation will include SEM imaging and EDS mapping (Hitachi TM4000Plus tabletop system). The density will be generated from surface images and analysed using ImageJ software. Critical failure modes will be determined by observation of cracking and delamination in the coatings.

References:

1 Kudrynskyi et al. IEEE 5th Intern. Conf. on Dielectrics 2024 doi: 10.1109/ICD59037.2024..

Application Instructions:
Application Closing Date:12 May 2025

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Our University is a supportive inclusive caring and positive community. We warmly welcome those of different cultures ethnicities and beliefs indeed this very diversity is vital to our success it is fundamental to our values and enriches life on campus. We welcome applications from UK Europe and from across the globe.

Further information:

The University of Nottingham will ask you whether you have any unspent criminal convictions as part of our preassignment checks. If the position you are applying for is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 you will be asked to confirm both spent and unspent convictions at the point of offer. Examples of such posts include clinical medical and allied health roles roles involving childcare services. A DBS check may also be required.

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