New UROP opportunities will be listed here for one month, and thereafter will appear on the relevant faculty page (UROP website) until notified otherwise by the relevant member of academic staff.

Please note: The vast majority of advertised UROPs are advertised within academic departments for an internal audience (Imperial undergraduates) OR (and this is the route taken for most UROPs) are sourced by an individual student (whether an Imperial undergraduate OR an eligible undergraduate at another university) through direct contact with academic/research staff. Therefore this NEW OPPORTUNITIES page is normally used only by research groups who are looking to widen the audience for any UROP they are planning.

NEW: 4 May 2023

Development of Sodium-Ion Fibre Batteries: Fibre sodium-ion batteries (NIBs) could be attractive as sustainable, low-cost flexible power solutions because they can be woven into textiles, offering a convenient way to power future wearable electronics. This concept has recently been demonstrated for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), but these devices rely on critical materials, and are expensive to produce. Switching to NIBs allows the use of biomass-derived hard carbons coated on aluminium instead of graphite on copper, significantly enhancing overall sustainability and improving cost.

• This project aims to produce continuous hard carbon anode and Na3V2(PO4)3 (NVP) cathode coatings on aluminium wire current collector. Hard carbons will be produced by hydrothermal synthesis of glucose; NVP will be obtained commercially or from collaborators.
• In this project we will investigate how to optimise electrode coating formulations to achieve maximum active material loading without peeling from the current collector, and strategies to combine and encapsulate the electrodes into a working fibre battery.
• You will gain experience in materials synthesis, battery assembly and electrochemical characterisation to study how the electrode coatings and fibre battery length affect performance.

The research experience is a full-time role for 8 weeks during June – September 2023. Start date is flexible.

Skills and experience required: The Royce Undergraduate Research Internship Scheme is intended for undergraduate students on a course related to materials science or engineering. Students should be moving from their penultimate to final year of study, including integrated Master’s courses. Final year students already accepted onto a PhD programme are not eligible.

Applications from students from a diverse range of backgrounds are encouraged.

A bursary of £400 per week will be provided for the duration of the project. The funding is provided by the Royce Undergraduate Research Internship Scheme.

To apply, please send your CV and cover letter (indicating why you would be a good candidate for this opportunity) to h.au13@imperial.ac.uk by 19th May.

Contact details: Dr Heather Au, Department of Chemical Engineering, ACEX 459, South Kensington Campus:  E: h.au13@imperial.ac.uk ; Tel: 020 7594 6636