Project Labs

The other section of the Research Labs are the Project Labs. These are dedicated lab spaces that are project specific and themed based on one of the strategic verticals of RIC2D. There are 5 rooms each connected with the necessary facility gases, and work benches with electricity and water supply to allow the freedom to each project team and the researchers to base their work and custom setups. The current themes of each rooms are:

MXenes Innovation Lab

Groundbreaking work lead by RIC2D’s MXenes Maestro, Dr. Faisal Shahzad, in this hottest and trending areas of 2D materials research is being conducted in this lab within RIC2D. The lab room houses the needed tools to ensure the MXenes materials formulations and applications are effectively screened and tested.

Integrated composites Lab

These are spaces provided to drive work on composite materials, resins and integration of 2D materials into matrix structures of other bulk materials.
Currently, this lab has multiple 3D DLP printers for fabricating specialized composite membranes, as well as capabilities for carbon fiber composites formulations.

Advanced Membranes Testing Lab

In this space, researchers test novel membranes particularly for water filtration and desalination applications using customized test rigs and setups.

Energy Breakthroughs Lab

This room is especially supplied with a low-pressure hydrogen line, specifically to drive research in sustainable energy, fuel cells, and hydrogen economy. It is currently dedicated to a collaborative project jointly with the RICH Center towards the H2DM vision of implementing 2D materials for sustainable H2 solutions.

Some of the specialized instruments in this room are:
Hydrogen Fuel Cell – Scitech	A custom fuel cell for testing advanced membranes and electrodes for PEM fuel cell technology
Electrolyzer – Scietech	Essential Instrument for elemental splitting of water molecules using electric current.

Each of these spaces are access card activated, given the needed privacy for projects of confidential nature, and having sufficient space as well to host benchtop instruments and equipment that need to be in the same working space for the ongoing work.

Within the research labs for materials testing using common characterization equipment, and the project labs, there are common fume hoods available, and accessible by all lab users. Fume hoods can be dedicated to a certain project for a specific duration where needed.

In addition to the distinct and advanced equipment listed above, the research labs have a plethora of smaller bench-top tools and instruments essential for helping day-to-day work on materials handling, weighting, polishing and mixing.

All in all, the Centre is well-equipped to house most types of advanced materials research work, and go beyond through its extended access and collaboration to the wider KU core labs and facilities, making RIC2D labs a true multi-disciplinary space positioned for pioneering materials research and manufacturing innovations.
Finally, the labs are suitable for hosting external partners and collaborators, interested in benefitting and making use of all the facilities available to drive their research work and meet their projects deadlines.