Overview
This project is part of a 4 year Dual PhD degree programme between the National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan and the University of Liverpool in England. As Part of the NTHU-UoL Dual PhD Award students are in the unique position of being able to gain 2 PhD awards at the end of their degree from two internationally recognised world leading Universities. As well as benefiting from a rich cultural experience, Students can draw on large scale national facilities of both countries and create a worldwide network of contacts across 2 continents.
About this opportunity
This PhD is delivered through the dual NTHU–University of Liverpool programme. The first two years will be spent at NTHU (Prof. Chia-Her Lin) and the following two years at Liverpool (Dr Hamid Rajabi and Prof John Bridgeman). This collaboration creates a powerful synergy between NTHU’s top-down expertise in molecular-level material design and synthesis and UoL’s bottom-up strength in system-level engineering, prototyping, and sustainability assessment. This end-to-end approach ensures that the developed materials are not only scientifically novel but also practically viable and environmentally sustainable.
This PhD project addresses water scarcity by developing low-energy atmospheric water-harvesting (AWH) materials that can capture moisture from air and release it using sunlight or other mild heat sources. The work will focus on porous, hygroscopic adsorbents integrated into sustainable composite structures that combine strong water uptake at low-to-moderate relative humidity with practical formability, durability, and reduced environmental footprint. The approach emphasises scalable materials design and responsible manufacturing, supporting resilient water technologies aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goal 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure).
In Years 1-2 (NTHU), the research will centre on materials development and composite integration. You will synthesise and screen high-performing porous adsorbents with stable water sorption behaviour, and engineer low-cost carbon-based supports with controlled porosity and surface chemistry. You will then develop robust composite-fabrication routes to optimise interfacial contact, mass transfer, and cycling stability, using standard characterisation tools (e.g., sorption analysis, thermal and structural characterisation) and repeatable performance testing under relevant humidity conditions.
In Years 3-4 (University of Liverpool), the optimised composites will be translated into prototype AWH components and evaluated under controlled environmental conditions across a wide humidity range, with testing under simulated solar illumination (or calibrated laboratory light sources where required). Key outcomes will include device-level water yield, adsorption/desorption kinetics, and long-term cycling performance. The project will also include sustainability and deployment-oriented assessment, using life-cycle and techno-economic methods to benchmark performance, cost, and embodied impacts against current AWH approaches. Overall, the PhD will deliver an end-to-end materials-to-prototype pathway for scalable, off-grid water harvesting technologies suited to resilient infrastructure applications.