$26 million awarded through ARC Linkage projects

Funding totalling $26 million has been announced through ARC Linkage Projects 2023 Round 1 across 50 projects, including for next-generation microchip manufacture, anodes for next-generation lithium batteries, and addressing superalloy microstructure defects.

The Linkage Projects scheme backs projects that “initiate or develop long term strategic research alliance” and provides funding of between $50,000 and $300,000 per annum for up to five years.

“By supporting these partnerships, the ARC encourages the transfer of skills, knowledge and ideas between researchers and partner organisations, and the intergenerational knowledge and skills transmission among researchers that is crucial to building Australia’s research capability,” said ARC CEO Judi Zielke in a statement on Tuesday.

The top university for supported projects was University of Queensland (seven) and the top field of research for supported projects was engineering (12.)

Manufacturers involved in funded projects include

Materials technology developer Kinaltek, partnering with University of Technology Sydney. UTS was awarded $737,000 for a project aiming “to develop low-cost high-performance silicon-based anode materials for next generation high-energy lithium-ion batteries.”
Metal additive manufacturing specialist Conflux Technology, partnered with Deakin University on advanced protective coatings for thermal management. Deakin was awarded $508,098 for a project aiming “ to develop new nanomaterial coatings and advanced plasma coating technology to address the global issue of e-waste caused by short lifespan thermal energy management devices (TEMDs) used in energy (solar, wind, oil), transport (aerospace, automotive, marine) and industrial (manufacturing, mining) sectors.”
Tokyo Electron Center America – part of Japanese semiconductor industry business Tokyo Electron – is partnering with University of Queensland on new strategies for integrated circuit manufacture. UQ was awarded $818,769 for the project, which aims “to introduce new polymers for production of computer chips and, in collaboration with our industry partner, develop new methods of manufacture to enable the next generation of chips.”
Superalloy ingot, billet and bar maker Western Australian Specialty Alloys has partnered up with University of New South Wales for a project addressing microstructure defect formation in superalloys. UNSW was awarded $479,527 for the project, which “will generate new knowledge on its microstructure evolution and defect origin via a combined experimental and computational approach. Expected outcomes are advanced manufacturing routes with higher yield of defect free materials, using more scrap as input.”

The 50 successful projects were selected from a total of 171 applications during the round.