AMBER Announce Extended Strategic Partnership with Nokia Bell Labs
Posted on: 18 October 2016
AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science institute headquartered at Trinity today announced a significantly extended strategic partnership with Nokia Bell Labs. The partnership is based on a 4 year commitment of €1.1m from Nokia Bell Labs, both cash and in-kind. This includes a number of Nokia Bell Labs researchers-in-residence who are embedded in research groups based at AMBER. Science Foundation Ireland is contributing a further €1.2m bringing the total value of the research collaboration to €2.3m. The main research focus is on novel energy storage technologies and advanced thermal management systems to enable extreme integration of optoelectronics devices.
The announcement was made on the occasion of Minister John Halligan’s visit to Trinity’s Advanced Microscopy Laboratory (AML). The AML houses world-leading microscopy facilities, accessible to Nokia Bell Labs researchers. This state-of-the-art infrastructure, combined with the open interactions between technical experts from AMBER and Nokia Bell Labs, has greatly supported the joint research partnership.
Welcoming the investment, Minister of State with responsibility for Training and Skills, Mr John Halligan TD, said, “Today’s announcement of a €2.3m investment in AMBER’s growing collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs is a testament to the importance of our ongoing investment in Ireland’s scientific research. We have a wealth of high quality researchers in our academic institutes and my Department, through Science Foundation Ireland, will continue to support industrial partnerships that promote research commercialisation and job growth. The commitment of multinational companies like Nokia, is further recognition of Ireland’s outstanding talent and state of the art infrastructure.”
Prof Michael Morris, Director AMBER said “We are delighted that Nokia Bell Labs is committing long-term to the research here at AMBER, allowing us to investigate advanced materials for thermal management in the next generation of communication, thermoelectric and energy storage devices. This has opened up possibilities of more work for more researchers and potentially greater funding. For example, the number of projects that Nokia Bell Labs is working on with AMBER investigators has increased from 2 to 4 requiring an increase in headcount from 2.5 to 7 fulltime postdoctoral researchers. Six of our Investigators work on Nokia Bell Labs projects, and there have been a number of high impact publications arising from the collaborative work. In addition, we are jointly exploring the potential for European funding for further projects.”
Julie Byrne, Executive Director Nokia Bell Labs in Ireland said, “We are delighted to continue to strengthen the Nokia Bell Labs relationship with our strategic university partner AMBER. Our joint research projects in the area of energy storage, energy harvesting and energy efficiency will provide key technologies to enable Nokia’s Future X Network vision, which will transform human existence through the digitization and connection of everything. We are very excited about the potential of this collaboration which brings together world class researchers from AMBER and Nokia Bell Labs.”
The increase in investment by Nokia Bell Labs is as a result of the success of the joint research collaboration with AMBER over the last 4 years. The mutually beneficial research partnership is based on Bell Labs providing scientific and industry expertise around thermal science and energy efficiency and AMBER providing deep fundamental materials science expertise and world leading characterisation facilities. This has resulted in high impact joint publications in the fields of energy storage and materials for energy efficient optical devices, with more in the pipeline.
For example, a recent publication between AMBER Investigators, Professors Jonathan Coleman, Valeria Nicolosi and Georg Duesberg and Dr. Paul King (Nokia Bell Labs) in the prestigious journal ACS Nano has demonstrated a new type of electrode for lithium ion batteries. This research is aimed at realizing commercially viable batteries with high storage capacity in a substantially lower volume compared to what is possible with current state of the art technology. The work focussed on the novel use of a commercial polymer to replace multiple non-active additives in silicon nanoparticle based negative electrodes.
Prof John Donegan, AMBER Investigator and Trinity’s School of Physics works with Nokia Bell Labs on novel devices and materials for energy efficient optical communications. The team have developed several new techniques for thermal analysis and control of devices required for the massive increase in data transfer rates that the industry expects to experience. He also had a recent publication, based on the development of a new class of perovskite materials that could use their fluorescent properties to keep laser devices cool.
In addition, there has been joint work with Profs Stefano Sanvito and Plamen Stamenov on new, high performance non-corrosive and magnetic shielding materials to extend the range and increase the robustness of Nokia’s technologies. Corrosion is a major issue in the electronics and communications industries and this work is a fundamental study to determine what metals are best suited to achieve high reliability, even in extreme environments.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr Ruth Freeman, Science Foundation Ireland Director for Strategy and Communications said, “The outstanding expertise and infrastructure that has been established at the Science Foundation Ireland-funded AMBER Research Centre provides a fantastic platform, not only for Irish research and development, but also for industrial collaboration. We are delighted to support successful partnerships with multinational companies like Nokia and world-leading research labs like Nokia Bell Labs, reinforcing Ireland’s international reputation for enterprise and innovation.”