Centre of Excellence for Frontier Materials Research was established in August 2015. It is the eighth Centre of Excellences that were established in University Malaysia Perlis.
Currently, there are twelve Centre of Excellences in the Universiti Malaysia Perlis with the specific niche research to foster research activities across disciplines. The establishment of the Centre of Excellence for Frontier Materials Research is in line the National Policy of 11th Malaysia Plan (2016 -2020), Strategy #6, which are to Re-engineering Economic Growth for Greater Prosperity.
Prior to the establishment as the Centre of Excellence, it was known as the Sustainable Engineering Research Cluster (SERC) since 2005. The research cluster was used as a platform to promote and cultivate research activities among young lecturers and researchers at the School of Materials Engineering. Then, university had agreed to upgrade as the Centre of Excellence for Frontier Materials Research after a decade of its remarkable achievements. Currently, the research focuses on two main research themes:
(1) Advanced Materials for Energy Application
(2) Sustainable Engineering for Environment.
The research activities are involving the development of new and improved Materials for Energy Applications such as cathode and electrolytes for Rechargeable Lithium-ion Batteries, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC), and Photocatalysis. In the meantime, development of Advanced Electronic Materials such as piezoelectric materials for energy harvester, dielectric materials for resonator antenna (DRA) and ceramic capacitor are actively executed. We are also supporting other diverse researches towards Sustainable Engineering for Environments such as Advanced Alloys, Advanced Composites, Advanced Catalytics and Membrane Technology, and Surface Engineering.
The development of high-energy density and high-voltage cathode materials for rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries is one of the strategic researches at the Centre of Excellence since 2012. Under this flagship of research, a joint research collaboration with the Professor BVR Chowdary’s group at the Advanced Battery Lab, Dept. of Physics, National University of Singapore (NUS) was established between 2012 and 2018. Thus, it enables postgraduates’ students and researchers from UniMAP to access the best battery testing facilities in South-East Asia. Outcomes from this research collaboration enable high quality manuscripts were published in the Solid-State Ionics, Electrochimica Acta, Materials Science and Engineering B: Advanced Functional Materials, International Journal of Ionics The Science and Technology of Ionic Motion (IONICS), Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance and others.
In the meantime, we also engaged with Eclimo Sdn Bhd for technical consultation on product requirements and the technological needs for the development of prototypes of rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries. Eclimo Sdn Bhd is a Malaysian-owned electric vehicle company located at Penang Island’s Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone. They are involved in consultation, R&D activities and also manufacturing electric motorcycles and battery pack modules for customized products in the Northern region of Malaysia.
Recently, Xair Group of Companies which is a leading telecommunication tower provider in South-East Asia had register their interest in commercialising lithium-ion battery technologies that been developed in our Centre of Excellence. The mutual agreement on terms and conditions are under purview to be reached soon by Xair Group of Companies and UniMAP. This latest development has brought the Centre of Excellence to the next level of research and development approaches to meet the expectation by local industries.
On the other hand, the development novel and improved electroceramics for energy application is also another flagship research at the Centre of Excellence. The research involved on enhancement of the intrinsic properties electroceramics that exhibits dielectrics, ferroelectricity, and piezoelectricity for electronic devices such as High-k dielectric capacitor, dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) and energy harvester. This research activities are involving research partnership with several local universities such as Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Malaya (UM) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). This is a part of efforts for technological transfer from The University of Sheffield, UK to Universiti Malaysia Perlis after two of researchers from the Centre of Excellence obtained their PhD under supervision of Professor Anthony R West (Eminent Professor in Solid State Chemistry and Electroceramics). The outcomes of this research works were filed for patents and published in high reputable journals such as Ceramics International and Journal of Materials Science: Materials for Electronics.
Furthermore, other research activities such as development advanced materials for Photocatalytic Fuel Cell, Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (IT-SOFC), Membrane Technology, Polymer Composites and others also actively conducted. The scale of research activities is relied on the amount of research grants that obtained from government and partly from industries. Most of current research grants are focused towards fundamental research rather than products. Thus, the outcomes of current research activities are mostly related to the discovery of new science to support teaching and learning activities in UniMAP.
Presently, there are 45 academic staffs are associated with the Centre of Excellence as Research Fellows across diverse disciplines comprise of nine different research groups. The research groups known as Sustainable Engineering Materials, Electronics Materials, Energy Materials, Surface Engineering, Materials Modelling, Materials Chemistry, Advanced Materials and Composites, Advanced Catalytic and Membrane Technology, and Functional Food Technology.