Coatings Research Group Team
Chris completed his PhD in 2018 at Swansea University and is the technology transfer fellow for functional coatings, sponsored by Tata Steel Colors at SPECIFIC.
Chris works closely with TATA Steel Colors, providing laboratory assistance to EngD students and technical support for industrial problems. His main area of research is developing innovative functional coatings for building materials which can be manufactured on an industrial scale. Recently, he has begun researching sol-gel based coatings which can offer functional properties such as self-cleaning and improved corrosion resistance. Sol-gels may also have the benefit of reduced production cost and reduced CO2 footprint compared to conventional organic coatings. Chris is based at the Pilot Manufacturing Research Centre in Baglan and has expertise on the production and characterisation of organic coatings using a wide range of analytical equipment.
Sarah-Jane is a scale up technology transfer fellow under the Industrial Coatings group in SPECIFIC. Her work focuses on developing large-scale screen printed mesoporous carbon perovskite solar modules in the pilot production plant, as well as working on other printed electronics projects.
Prior to becoming a researcher, Sarah-Jane completed her EngD in the Welsh Centre of Printing and Coating (WCPC), Swansea University, sponsored by icmPrint Consortium through the Materials and Manufacturing Academy (M2A). This research looked at the effect of ink viscosity and parameter settings on how inks and pastes are deposited during screen printing, along with the effects of post processing on print quality and performance. Sarah-Jane also holds a Master of Engineering (MEng), first class with honours in Product Design Engineering from Swansea University.
Chris is a Technology Transfer Fellow working as part of Dr Jewell’s Coating Development team at SPECIFIC. His key areas of research include the development of novel coating systems, weathering induced degradation analysis, and the use of computational chemical modelling as a predictor of future coating performance.
For the past 4 years Chris has focussed on the development of novel resins and coil coating systems as part of his EngD project, sponsored by Beckers Group. This involved the use of accelerated and natural weathering exposure with periodic FT-IR and Raman analysis alongside other analytical tests.