PhD Studentship: Responsible innovation in metamaterials for circular economy and sustainability: building the evidence base for inclusive and sustainable applications

Metamaterials are advanced materials with engineered structures that give them properties beyond those of their constituent materials. They are increasingly positioned by academics and policymakers as a critical addition to advanced materials product pipelines. Public and private investment in the field is accelerating significantly – UKRI alone have more than £58 million currently invested in active grants linked to metamaterials. The Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy (2025) highlights the £19.6 million investment by EPSRC and partners in the 3D Nanoscale Metamaterials Hub for a Sustainable Future (MetaHUB), led by the University of Exeter.

Potential applications of metamaterials span a huge range of sectors and challenges, including significantly reducing and/or replacing critical minerals, designing more efficient solar panels, reducing the radar interference of wind turbines, creating antimicrobial surfaces, or making invisibility cloaks. While metamaterials hold great promise for reducing dependence on finite resources, enabling more sustainable manufacturing, and improving access to renewable energy - among other socially, economically and environmentally beneficial outcomes - the evidence base for these benefits and impacts is underdeveloped.

Furthermore, metamaterials research and innovation to date has been predominantly driven by academic, industry and policy actors. This project addresses this gap by developing a responsible innovation approach to metamaterials for circular economy and sustainability. The project will investigate the promise and impacts of metamaterials applications by combining sustainability and circularity analysis such as Life Cycle Assessment with qualitative and mixed methods responsible innovation approaches to anticipate, reflect, engage and act on metamaterials and their potential futures.

This comes at a crucial time for metamaterials development where the main manufacturing and hence end of life options are being decided now. he MetaHUB’s manufacturing theme in particular is comparing scaled manufacturing methods over the next 4 years with key industry members ranging from STMicroelectronics to Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Doctoral Landscape Award PepsiCo.

This project will result in research findings, policy and practice recommendations towards more sustainable, inclusive and responsible metamaterials applications. More specifically, the project will:

• Scope and analyse the range of applications, sectors and sociotechnical visions embedded in current metamaterials research, innovation and policy contexts, first broadly, and then with a particular focus on circular economy and sustainability-relevant research and applications (e.g. metamaterials for clean energy, bioinspired design, etc.).

• Conduct in depth case studies of up to five metamaterials projects, devices, components or products to investigate how sustainability, circular economy and responsible innovation are currently conceptualised, measured, embedded and practiced.

• Compare these metamaterial devices, components or products with their equivalents through LCA and related sustainability assessment.

• Develop frameworks and practices for responsible innovation in metamaterials research, including stakeholder and public engagement, exploring the sociotechnical, sociomaterial, ethical, political, aesthetic, cultural, environmental and ecological dimensions of metamaterials.

• Combine qualitative and quantitative methods to develop new systemic and situated understandings of metamaterials within their broader social, environmental and economic contexts, and to build the evidence base for their potential social, environmental and economic impacts.
• Make recommendations for academic, industry, policy and civil society actors to enable responsible, inclusive, sustainable metamaterials research, innovation and deployment, including how value can be captured, distributed and shared. The project will draw on the extensive networks of the Centre for Metamaterial Research and Innovation, Exeter Centre for Circular Economy, and the Centre for Responsible Innovation.

Funded by: EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council