Metals play a central role in biology. Microbial processes, in particular, have evolved over several billions of years to bioprocess a broad range of metals, ensuring their incorporation into biomolecules as metal cofactors where needed, or to detoxify them when they accumulate to dangerous levels. Metals are also very important to industry being used in products spanning construction, transport, electronics, medicine and the chemical industries. Metals are especially important as catalysts, underpinning many sectors of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. For example, metal catalysts are responsible for 30% of Europe's gross domestic product, and the processing of 80% of all manufactured products. However, the most important metals used for catalysis applications (e.g. palladium and platinum), are very expensive, in short supply and toxic to the environmental if released. The EB-MIND project brings together a unique group of world-renowned academics to develop an entirely new approach for recovering the metals needed for catalysis from waste industrial solutions, addressing these problems. EB-MIND will use state of the Engineering Biology tools to fine-tune metal-recovering microbes that live naturally in the environment, adapting them to the unique and toxic conditions in industrial waste, so that they can recover valuable metals from industrial waste streams and make unique, catalytically active nanoparticles for industrial use. Working with a major catalyst provider (Johnson Matthey) EB-MIND will explore how these novel Engineering Biology-enhanced biotechnological metal recovery processes can be used to support a globally important industry, and quantify the environmental impacts of these new processes within a low waste "circular economy".

Catalysts are molecules that participate in a chemical reaction to speed it up but are not consumed in the process. They are vital to everyday life enabling scientists to make the products we need to survive - drugs, plastics, clothing. A well know catalytic example is the Haber-Borsch process which provides ammonia for fertiliser that ultimately helps feed the half the world. This man-made nitrogen fixation process requires high temperatures and pressures using 1-2% of the world's energy supply. In contrast, plants perform nitrogen fixation at ambient temperatures and pressures using metalloenzymes. Enzymes and metalloenzymes are nature's catalysts: proteins that have evolved over time to be highly selective and efficient catalysts for making a wide range of products from abundant natural resources, such as sugars, water, and air. Chemists have long sought to mimic enzymes in pursuit of the ideal catalyst for a sustainable chemical future providing for society's needs. Artificial metalloenzymes (ArMs), that combine enzymes and organometallic catalysts, present an exciting opportunity to obtain the ideal catalyst by introducing unprecedented chemical reactivity into metalloenzymes, preserving the benefits of enzymes whilst widening their synthetic utility. Metal catalysts allow a wide range of reactions to occur, including the activation of inert C-H bonds (also known as C-H functionalisation). The transformation of two C-H bonds into a C-C bond represents one of the most efficient transformations available to chemists with only two hydrogen atoms generated as waste. These reactions have enormous potential in reducing waste and also in reducing the number of chemical steps required for product formation by avoiding the need to activate the C-H bond before C-C bond creation, thus lowering the energy and time costs of synthesis. C-H functionalisation reactions are difficult to carry out selectively as many C-H bonds are present in the starting molecules and the innate selectivity of the molecule is not always the desired selectivity for product formation. By carefully modelling and designing new metal centres into protein scaffolds, I will create ArMs, which use the protein scaffold to influence the active site environment and lead to high control of selectivity. One advantage of using ArMs is that they are encoded by DNA allowing the selectivity and activity to be rapidly optimised using directed evolution - a method based on natural selection. Using this approach, I will create highly selective and active ArMs for C-H functionalisation reactions. The genetic nature of the ArMs also allows them to be transferred into bacterial cells to carry out unnatural chemical reactions within a cell. I aim to introduce these artificial metalloenzymes into novel biosynthetic pathways to provide access to unnatural 'natural' products and other complex molecules. The ArMs developed in this project will have the potential to introduce unnatural activities into living organisms, and can be applied in areas beyond chemical synthesis including energy, biomaterials and health applications.

As the UK aligns with a global market place outside of the European Union, the UK needs to forge ahead through its world-leading capabilities in science, engineering and technology. Invention and innovation have been a bedrock of Britain's global presence and a key driver of productivity. Exemplifying a history of economic competitiveness, the UK has long held a significant capability in surfactant and functional polymer technology. The purpose of this proposal is to maintain and extend the UK's technical and manufacturing leadership in this sector. In 1883, Unilever pioneered Sunlight Soap; it was innovative and had a purpose: to popularise cleanliness and bring it within reach of ordinary people. Since then, Unilever now has over 400 brands and the company remains driven by purpose. The use of fossil-derived feedstocks and a linear manufacturing paradigm has exacerbated climate change, shifting the future needs of the manufacturing landscape. Remaining competitive in a global setting requires renewed investment into the multi-disciplinary expertise that defines British innovation. This PP is an exemplification of Unilever's transition away from fossil-derived chemicals in product formulations, exploring innovative ways of reducing the carbon footprint of some of the world's biggest cleaning and laundry brands. As a key component of Unilever's Clean Future vision, Unilever expects this programme to markedly contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of product formulations by up to 20%. As such, Unilever aims to contribute globally to UN Sustainable Development Goals such as Sustainable Industrialisation and Climate Action by reducing the carbon intensity of both the manufacture and product life cycle associated with cleaning and laundry products worldwide. The manufacture of surfactants and functional polymers from renewable feedstocks through the transformative power of sustainable engineering science, represents an unrivalled opportunity to decarbonise this value chain though UK technology leadership spanning the global stage. The vision of this Prosperity Partnership (PP) is to achieve appreciable decarbonisation of the surfactant and functional polymer value chain, aligning the current linear (take-make-waste) manufacturing paradigm to greater resource circularity. In common with many materials derived from fossil reserve feedstocks, surfactants and functional polymers have multi-kilogram CO2eq emissions per kilogram of surfactant/polymer associated with manufacturing; depending on feedstock, process technology and location. Against this life cycle assessment (LCA) backdrop, the global scale of surfactant production is 1.5 - 2 million tonnes per year, necessitating action to reduce these carbon emissions globally. This proposal's far-reaching vision integrates both CO2 and process circularity into a comprehensive new paradigm for surfactant and functional polymer manufacturing, aiming to reduce global warming potential by an order of magnitude. Three work packages (WP) fill the knowledge gaps that exist within the proposed circular economy. Overarchingly, the PP aims to establish a techno-economically feasible circular economy with highly favourable life cycle assessment (LCA) outcomes, mitigating climate change through sustainable industrialisation. WP1 entails the redesign of key surfactants and functional polymers in cleaning and laundry products used worldwide. WP2 aims to enhance the techno-economic footing of rhamnolipid bio-surfactants, whilst WP3 looks towards a hybrid bio-refinery for the production of drop-in surfactants from renewable feedstocks. These UK advances in surfactant/polymer technol-ogy will have both national and global deployment capability, representing a first in class demonstration of decarbonisation through resource circularity in the bulk chemicals sector, framing and catalysing knowledge exchange towards net zero in 2050.

Printed electronics are becoming integrated into every part of modern-day life, from light-emitting diodes, to solar cells and printed biosensors such as wearable electronics. The flexible electronics market alone is predicted to be valued at $74 billion by 2030. Whilst the technology already exists to manufacture large-scale flexible electronics, by way of the environmentally friendly, roll-to-roll industrial processes which employ inkjet printing, currently the metal inks that are employed have their limitations. The patterning of molten metals is incompatible with affordable flexible materials, including renewable eco-friendly plastics or paper, this mismatch is due to, in part, the high melting point of metals (often over a thousand degrees) and the deformation temperature of a range of plastic, paper or fabric materials being considerably lower (ca. 100 - 200 degrees Celcius). Current techniques used in the production of printed electronics are time consuming and expensive multi step-techniques that require the use of toxic chemicals. These state-of-the-art techniques require metal flakes/particles to be 'melted' together, resulting in contaminants between layers, which reduce overall conductivity of the metal. An obvious solution to this problem is the use of specially designed inks, containing small molecules that can be printed into any desired pattern onto any material, and then be thermally 'activated' at low temperatures, in order to convert them to conductive metal. This project aims to design and synthesise new small molecules in order to improve the performance of existing printing technologies. These would provide a tuneable alternative to the current industrial nanoparticle inks based on silver or copper whose activation temperatures are too high for printing onto many materials. In addition, understanding how the structure of a small molecule can influence its ability to act as a precursor to the metal is challenging, and gaining insight will enable us to adjust thermal activation temperatures, such that after printing, it can yield highly conductive metal. Aluminium metal is earth abundant, boasts conductivity comparable to silver and copper and yet has never been used industrially to inkjet print conductive tracks. This is because suitable precursors do not exist, despite the rich field of synthetic aluminium chemistry. To overcome this problem, we propose to adapt our small molecule design to be better compatible with modern lower temperature deposition techniques. To reap the benefits of using printing techniques for device fabrication inks that will transform at low temperatures (affording compatibility with low cost flexible materials) will be produced. This project will create a library of novel highly performing inks from aluminium which can be printed and sintered in air on low cost flexible materials for incorporation into electronic devices. The aim of this project is to develop new small molecules containing aluminium, formulate these into metal inks and subsequently print highly conductive metal features onto low cost flexible materials for use in electronic devices.

The chemistry of carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) is deeply embedded in our future plans for energy production, chemical manufacturing and sustainable living. Remediation of CO2 has become a major topic of research in the last ten years and conversion of CO to hydrocarbons is already being applied on vast scales in industry. Catalysis underpins the development of this industry. COx-to-fuels, COx-to-molecules and COx-to-materials (x = 1 or 2) research is indispensable for the growth of the economy, improvement of quality of life, and regulation of gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Arguably the most established technology operating in this landscape if Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) catalysis. The F-T process converts mixtures of CO and H2 into short to medium chain hydrocarbons. Recent research has focused on the use of CO2 rich gas streams. This reaction can be considered as a controlled polymerisation and hydrogenation of CO / CO2 to generate liquid fuels. Despite its advantages, F-T catalysis produces simple alkanes and alkenes, not complicated molecules. Carbon chain formation occurs alongside removal of the oxygen atoms, in the form of H2O, reducing complexity and value. F-T does not capitalise on the potential chemical intricacy that could be introduced when combining COx units to form chains. In this project we will develop an entirely new approach to use CO and CO2 in chemical manufacture. We plan to exploit a remarkable recent finding from our labs (JACS, 2018, 13614): that carbon chains of 3 to 4 units of length can be grown from CO and CO2 on organometallic networks. We will develop underpinning science to discover the rules for chain growth. We will deliver new approaches to generate small carbon chains from CO and CO2 with control of size and shape. The new carbon chains will be exploited in synthesis as the major molecular component in the construction of complex organic molecules. The long-term vision behind this project is the development of a modern approach in catalysis that is complementary to both F-T processes and CO2-to-materials research. One that builds molecular complexity from CO and CO2. This proposal describes a three-year project that represents the first steps from discovery toward this goal.