News
January-October 2021
Welcome to our new Part III students.
Welcome to our new PhD Student Astrid Berge who joined the group in October.
April-October 2020
Welcome to our new Part III students, Astrid Berge, Matthew Walker, Kieran Mylrea, Jerry Tam and Maria Rosner.
Welcome to our new Post-Docs, Chloe Coates and Jana Fritzke who joined the group in October.
Welcome to our new PhD Student Teresa Insinna who joined the group in October.
Welcome to out new Post-Doc Annalena Genreith-Schriever. Annalena will be investigating ionic transport in battery electrode materials.
Welcome to our new PhD students Mark Carrington and Tarig Mustafa who joined the group in May.
Welcome to our new Post-Doc Dr Josh Bocarsly. Josh will be studying magnetic properties of battery cathode materials.
Welcome to our new Post-Doc Dr. Darren Ould. Darren will be working on the NEXGENNA sodium ion batteries project specifically focussing on developing new electrolytes for these systems.
Jan-April 2020
Welcome to Vera Kunz who joined the group as a PhD student in April.
Team Redox Flow has recently had their research featured in an article about the uses of MRI and NMR in helping to design systems for large-scale storage of renewable energy, it can be found here.
Congratulations to Dr. Evan Wenbo Zhao who has been awarded the STFC Futures Early Career Award to work on a collaborative project on redox flow batteries with Prof. Michael Aziz at the Harvard University.
One of our group members, Evelyna Wang, has recently published an article on the effects of atmospheric gases on Li metal cyclability and solid-electrolyte interphase formation. She also gave a presentation that can be viewed online here.
One of our group members, Dr David Hall, was recently featured on the Naked Scientists podcast, where he discussed how electric car batteries work.
Welcome to Dominic Hey who joined the group as a PhD student in January.
Congratulations to Dr. Evan Wenbo Zhao and Dr. Chao Xu who have been awarded the STFC Experimental Design Award to develop new in situ characterization methods for studying redox flow batteries.
October-December 2019
Congratulations to Dr Phillip Reeves who successfully defended his PhD viva on the 6th of December 2019!
Congratulations to Dr Simon Engelke who successfully defended his PhD viva on the 15th of November 2019!
Congratulations to Dr Nis-Julian Kneusels who successfully defended his PhD viva on the 11th of October 2019!
Welcome to all the new PhD students Richard Chen, James Ellison, Dongxun Lyu, Alice Merryweather, Ben Smith, and Holly Smith who joined the Grey Group in October.
Welcome to the Part III students Meredydd Jones and Tamsin Newlove who joined the group in October.
Welcome to Dr Chinwe A. Nwanya who is visiting from the University of Nigera, Nsukka. She will be visiting for two months under the Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund. She will be synthesizing some sodium based layered oxide materials and studying them in an aqueous battery system in real time using NMR and in-situ XRD.
Congratulation to Anna Gunnarsdottir who won an oral presentation prize during the Physical RIG Showcase Symposium held on Monday 26th September 2019.
Congratulations to Dr Yanting Jin for winning one of the Departmental Highly Commended PhD Thesis Awards for 2019 - a recognition of the remarkable contribution of her PhD thesis in the field of material science! The awards were given to the recipients during the Materials RIG Showcase Symposium held on Thursday 29th September 2019.
Congratulations to Anna Gunnarsdottir and Rajesh Jethwa who won oral presentation prizes in the SE-lectrochem 2019 conference at Imperial College London.
July-September 2019
Congratulation to Anna Gunnarsdottir who won an oral presentation prize during the Physical RIG Showcase Symposium held on Monday 26th September 2019.
Congratulations to Dr Yanting Jin for winning one of the Departmental Highly Commended PhD Thesis Awards for 2019 - a recognition of the remarkable contribution of her PhD thesis in the field of material science! The awards were given to the recipients during the Materials RIG Showcase Symposium held on Thursday 29th September 2019.
Congratulations to Anna Gunnarsdottir and Rajesh Jethwa who won oral presentation prizes in the SE-lectrochem 2019 conference at Imperial College London.
Welcome to Dr Chibueze Amanchukwu, who will be visiting us from Stanford. His work will involve the use of solid-state NMR techniques to study the influence of polymer coatings on lithium metal deposition.
Welcome to Dr David Hall who joins us as a Research Associate in July. He will combine a variety of synthetic and analytical techniques to study interfacial chemistry of energy storage systems. He will also be acting as a joint programme coordinator for battery degradation studies with the Faraday Institution.
April-June 2019
Congratulations to Dr Michael Hope who successfully defended his PhD viva on 7th June 2019!
Congratulations to James Ellison for achieving the Ron Snaith Prize for his excellent part III presentation.
The annual Grey Group retreat was held in the Peak District between 8th-12th May 2019. Special thanks to Team Retreat: Dr Matthew Dunstan, Philip Reeves, Francesca Firth, and Yuning Zhou.
Welcome to Dr Dominik Kubicki who is an MSCA Fellow in the Stranks Lab (Cavendish Laboratory) who joined the group in April. He will use multi-nuclear solid-state NMR to study lead halide perovskites for optoelectronics.
January-March 2019
Congratulations to Dr Aman Torayew who succesfully defended his PhD viva in March. We wish him the best of luck for his future career.
Welcome to Dr Quentin Jacquet who joined the group in March. He is working on new anode materials and lithium ion diffusion in Li-ion batteries.
Welcome to Dr Supreeth Nagendran who joined the group in February with the Newton International Fellowship, the title of his research proposal is 'Layered Double Hydroxides as Electrodes for Supercapacitors: A study on the charge-discharge mechanism'.
Welcome to Jennifer Thuillier who joined the group in January as a research assistant. She will be working predominantly on niobium tungsten oxide as an anode material.
October-December 2018
Congratulations to Dr Josh Stratford for his successful viva in December!
Welcome to Dr Farheen Sayed who joined the group in December. She will study solid state electrolytes, in particular the interphase between the solid electrolyte and the anode or cathode.
Congratulations to Dr Yanting Jin for her successful viva on the 8th November!
Welcome to all new PhD students Jennifer Allen, Euan Bassey, Haydn Francis, Victor Gonzalez, Sundeep Vema, Evelyna Wang, and Bo Wen who joined Grey Group in October.
Welcome to all Master students: Dominic Hey, Dongxun Lyu, Conrad Szczuka and Part III students:James Capel, James Ellison, Ben McConnell, James Richardson, and Tommy Sun who joined Grey Group in October.
Welcome to Dr Svetlana Menkin who joined the group in October. She will study the lithium-dendrite growth mechanisms and the prevention of dendrite formation by the creation of an artificial solid-electrolyte-interphase (SEI) on the lithium-metal anodes, as well as charge storage mechanisms of supercapacitors.
June-September 2018
Congratulations to Steffen Emge for winning the best poster award at the Materials RIG Showcase Symposium held on Thursday 27th September 2018.
Congratulations to Dr David Halat for winning one of the Departmental Outstanding PhD Thesis Awards for 2017 - a recognition of the remarkable contribution of his PhD thesis in the field of material science! The awards were given to the recipients during the Materials RIG Showcase Symposium held on Thursday 27th September 2018.
Welcome to Dr Chris O'Keefe who joined the group in August. His research focuses on the development and application of solid-state NMR techniques to improve the efficiency of the in situ investigation of battery materials.
March-May 2018
December 2017-February 2018
Welcome to Dr Chao Chao Xu, who joined the group in February. He will be working on Li-air batteries.
Welcome to Dr Katharina Märker, who join the group in February. She will be working on NMR of supercapacitors and electrodes.
Congratulations to Dr Roberta Pigliapochi for her successful viva on the 13th February!
Welcome to Dr Pierrick Berruyer, who joined the group as a Post-Doc in January. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry in September 2017 from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon) supervised by Pr Lyndon Emsley and Dr Anne Lesage. He will be working on SEI composition using (DNP enhanced) ssNMR.
Welcome to Francesco Panattoni, a new PhD student who joined the group in January. His PhD project will involve solid state NMR of organic shales and it is in collaboration with the Schlumberger Gould Research Center.
Welcome to Dr Yumi Kim who joined the group in December. She will be working on Li-air batteries.
September-November 2017
Congratulations to Dr Wei Meng for his successful viva on the 30th November!
Congratulations to Dr David Halat for his successful viva on the 29th November!
Welcome to Dr Evan W. Zhao who joined the group in November. He will be working on in situ NMR studies of batteries.
Congratulations to Dr Kent Griffith for his successful viva on the 16th November!
Welcome to the new PhD students who joined us in October: Francesca Firth, Rajesh Jethwa, Dylan Maxwell, Didi Rinkel and Tom Smith.
July-August 2017
Congratulations to Prof Clare Grey for several awards she received.
In July, Prof Clare Grey and Kent Griffith published an article in the summer issue of Chemistry at Cambridge Magazine entitled "Battery Safety All Solid State".
April-June 2017
Congratulations to Michael Hope for winning the prize for the best talk at the 10th NMR discussion group meeting at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow on 22nd June.
Welcome to Jingyu Lu who joined the group in June as a PostDoc. He will be working on in situ TEM of battery materials, solid-state batteries, and Li-O2 batteries.
In May, we went to our group retreat in the Costwolds. We had a lot of interesting sessions on scientific challenges in our research fields as well as group related topics. We also enjoyed a number of social activities including hiking, escape rooms, paintball and barbecue (see more in the Photo Gallery).
Welcome to Michael Jones and Matthias Fesser who joined the group in May. Michael Jones is a nanoDTC student and Matthias Fesser is an Erasmus student.
Welcome to Chinwe Nwanya, visiting student from the group of Prof. Fabian Ezema, University of Nigeria who joined the group in April. She will be working on oxides for pseudocapacitors.
January-March 2017
Welcome to Junchao Chen, visiting student from the group of Prof. Luming Peng, Nanjing University, who joined the group in March. He will be working on facet dependent surface-sensitive NMR of CeO2 and TiO2.
Welcome to Matthias Groh and Steffen Emge who joined the group in January. They will be working on all solid-state batteries.
October-December 2016
Congratulations to David Halat who received the BRSG (British Radiofrequency Spectroscopy Group) Founder's Prize on the 14th December for his talk on "17O solid-state NMR of functional paramagnetic oxides for energy conversion and catalysis"!
Welcome to Robert Weatherup who joined our group in December!
Congratulations to Wei Meng (PhD student) and Oliver Pecher (Post-Doctoral researcher) for winning the STFC Experimental Design Award for their project entitled "High temperature synchrotron in situ X-ray diffraction to unravel structural changes of cathodes in Li- and Na-ion batteries"!
Congratulations to Dr Beth Howe for her successful viva on the 21st of November!
Kent Griffith won a "Chemunicate" contest by presenting a description of his research project on developing advanced lithium ion batteries. A nice graphic illustrating his research is featured on the Compound Interest website.
Congratulations to Dr Ieuan Seymour for his successful viva on the 20th of October!
Welcome to our new group members! This October, we welcome two new postdoctoral researchers: Erlendur Jónsson, who will work on the modelling/characterization of the SEI of Na-ion batteries, and Lauren Marbella, who will work on in-situ NMR and MRI of novel battery materials. We also welcome Anna Gunnarsdóttir who is starting a PhD with us after her summer internship in the group. Welcome as well to our part III students: Rajesh Jethwa, Can Kocer, Francesca Firth, Samantha Flint, Didi Rinkel and Rona McKee.
July-September 2016
Congratulations to Dr Alison Michan for her successful viva on the 27th of September!
Oliver Pecher (post-doctoral researcher) and Kent Griffith (PhD student) are featured on the University's instagram. A good way to learn more about the research going on in the group!
Congratulations to Dr Raphaële Clément for her successful viva on the 25th of July!
Congratulations to Alexander Forse who received the Energy Sector PhD Thesis Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, for his thesis on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Studies of Ion Adsorption in Supercapacitor Electrodes. 
April-June 2016
In June, Michael Gaultois published an Op-Ed article entitled "Accurate science or accessible science in the media – why not both?".
In May, we went to our group retreat in the Wye Valley! This was an excellent time to exchange ideas and go hiking (see more in the Social Photo Gallery)!
The group has also welcomed Pierre Naeyaert, from the group of Prof. Chris Ling at the University of Sidney, who is going to work on Na NMR experiments on P2-type cathode materials.
Congratulations to Michael Hope who received the Detlef Müller Award for the Best Student Poster at the Developments and Applications of Solid State NMR conference in Varna!
January-March 2016
In March, the group has welcomed Nicolas Dubouis, an intern from ENS-Paris (École normale supérieure de Paris) who will be working on Li-air battery project.
In February, the group has welcomed a new post-doctoral researcher, Israel Temprano. He will be working on the development of in-situ DEMS characterization for Li-O2 batteries. The group also welcomed Long Nguyen, Erasmus student, who will work with us for a 6-month master thesis project on NMR investigations of Sc-doped NASICON Na-ion solid electrolytes.
October-December 2015
The end of the year was the time of the Grey Group Christmas Dinner that was held on 9th December in Downing College.
In December, Clare Grey, George Lane, and Alison Michan attended the 8th International Conference of the African Materials Research Society (MRS) in Accra, Ghana. Professor Grey gave a plenary lecture and George and Alison gave talks on their PhD research projects.
In December, the group has also welcomed a new post-doctoral researcher, Elizabeth Castillo-Martínez. She will be working on rechargeable Li-ion and Na-ion batteries.
This November, the group welcomed Brian Phillips from Stony Brook University. He was visiting the group for two weeks and gave a seminar entitled "Structural role of impurities in calcium carbonate from NMR". Also, Alison Michan, Kent Griffith and Clare Grey attended the UK Energy Storage 2015 Conference in Birmingham.
One of the Grey group members, Michael Gaultois, has been interviewed by Cambridge News regarding his work and experience as a post-doctoral researcher in Cambridge. To read more about this, go here. The group was also visited by BBC News during the last week of October: Clare Grey and Nicole Trease had the opportunity to comment on the Li-air technology. To view more about this, go here.
In October, the group has welcomed a new post-doctoral researcher, Javier Carretero González, who will be working on the development of innovative rechargeable materials for battery and supercapacitors. October was also the starting month for a number of new PhD students: welcome to Simon Engelke, Michael Hope, Nis-Julian Kneusels and Philip Reeves.
July-September 2015
Congratulations to Raphaële Clément for receiving the ECS 2015 F. M. Becket Summer Fellowship award!
Congratulations to Alison Michan for receiving the poster award on 9th September at the GDCh FGMR 37th Annual Meeting - Joint Discussion Meeting of the German and British Magnetic Resonance Societies and Priority Programme 1601 in Darmstadt, Germany! Poster title: "13C ssNMR Study of Electrolyte Decomposition in a Silicon Electrode Lithium Ion Battery System" by Alison Michan, Michal Leskes, and Clare Grey.
Congratulations to David Halat and Kent Griffith for winning travel awards for ECS Glasgow sponsored by the Energy Storage Research Network (ESRN) and UK Energy Superstore!
Congratulations to Kent Griffith who won the STFC Futures Early Career Award for supporting cutting-edge research in the area of Batteries and Electrochemical Energy Devices!
Congratulations to Dr Alex Forse for his successful viva on the 3rd September!
In September, the group has welcomed a new post-doctoral researcher, Matthew Cliffe, who will be studying defects and disorder in functional metal-organic frameworks.
In July, the group has welcomed a guest scientist, Arobendo Mondal, PhD student coming from the group of Prof. Martin Kaupp. He will perform CP2K calculations on various lithium phosphate materials for pNMR applications.
Congratulations to Prof. Clare Grey, winner of the Arfvedson-Schlenk Award for outstanding scientific and technical achievements in the field of lithium chemistry!
April-June 2015
Congratulations to Dr Amy Moore for her successful viva on the 24th June!
Congratulations to Dr Hao Liu for his successful viva on the 23rd June!
In June, the group has welcomed a guest scientist, Megan Butala, PhD student coming from the group of Ram Seshadri. She will study conversion reactions of FeS2 and CoS2 with Li using ex situ XRD, NMR, Raman, and IR techniques.
In May, the group has welcomed a new member, Michael Gaultois, who joined as a post-doctoral researcher. He will be investigating metal oxide composites for CO2 capture and looping processes. May was also the time for the Grey group retreat which took take place in the Peak district between the 13th and the 17th (see more in the Social Photo Gallery).
In April, the group has welcomed Abdul-Rahman Raji, a new postdoctoral researcher who will undertake research on graphene-based materials for energy storage; his work will be done in collaboration with the Cambridge Graphene Center.
January-March 2015
In March, six members of the group attended the STFC Early Career Researchers Conference in Abingdon. This was a good opportunity to see new research on energy storage and conversion in the UK and to exchange ideas at coffee breaks. (Conference dinner picture on the right, from left to right: David Halat, Kent Griffith, Sylvia Britto, Céline Merlet, Amangeldi Torayev, Luke Sperrin).
Congratulations to Dr Matthew Dunstan for his successful viva on the 2nd of March!
In February, the group had the chance to be visited by great academics: Prof. Alejandro Franco, from Université Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens), gave a talk entitled "Next generation computational tools for the design and optimization of the next-generation electrochemical energy devices", and Dr. Rosa Palacín, from Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, presented some of her latest research on "Non lithium based technologies: walking on the sodium side". We also met with Dirk Oligschläger, from RWTH Aachen
University, who performed some NMR-MOUSE experiments and gave a talk on "Advances in compact stray-field NMR".
In January, the group was visited by Matthew Cliffe, from Andrew Goodwin's group (University of Oxford), who enlightened us with a talk on "Correlated disorder in metal-organic frameworks". We also had the chance to hear a talk by Prof. Huaqiang Cao, from Tsinghua University (and Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge), on "Synthesis for inorganic nanostructures".
October-December 2014
The Grey group Christmas dinner took place in the Old Library of Pembroke College on the 3rd of December. This was the occasion to share good food, laughs, and some secret Santa gifts.
Congratulations to Dr Lina Zhou for her successfull viva on the 28th of November!
Several members of the group attended the first UK Energy Storage research conference (UKES2014) in Warwick and Phoebe Allan received the poster prize for her work on in situ pair distribution function analysis and NMR studies of antimony anodes for sodium-ion batteries.
In November, the group has welcomed Karen Johnston, postdoctoral researcher, who will be working on the ternary alloy TiSnSb alloy using NMR and PDF, in collaboration with Dr Nicolas Dupré from Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel (IMN, Université de Nantes), through the ALISTORE-ERI network.
Congratulations to Dr Ken Rosina for his successfull viva on the 4th of November!
The October month has seen the arrival of new members. Jeongjae Lee and Josh Stratford, former Part IIIs in the lab, rejoined the group to start their PhD. Jeongjae will be working on magnesium-ion batteries while Josh will be sudying anode materials for sodium-ion batteries. Evan Keyzer is also starting a PhD, he is jointly supervised by Prof. Dominic Wright and will be working on new battery electrolytes.
Congratulations to Dr Xiao Hua for his successfull viva on the 17th of October!
July-September 2014
Congratulations to Dr Fiona Strobridge for her successfull viva on the 24th of September!
In September, the group has welcomed two new members, Zigeng Liu, postdoctoral researcher, and Yanting Jin, PhD student, who will be both working on battery materials. Several group members attended local and international conferences including the ISE in Lausanne and TYC Symposia in London. Hugh Glass and Alison Michan also attended the Cambridge NanoDTC Autumn School in Morocco.
In August, the group has welcomed Rachel Kerber, a new postdoctoral researcher working on theoretical modelling of electrochemical systems through DFT calculations. We alco celebrated a very happy event in the lab, see the Photo Gallery.
This summer the Grey group hosted a number of visitors. David Bennett, fellow of the pNMR network, was visiting the group and working with Andrew Pell. Gosuke Oyama, PhD student in Atsuo Yamada laboratory at the University of Tokyo, visited the group to investigate iron-based cathode materials for sodium ion batteries through NMR experiments. We also had the visit of Kevin Sanders, PhD student at CRMN/ENS Lyon and fellow of the pNMR network, who works on the development of experiments and radio frequency irradiation schemes for improved measurement of correlations in paramagnetic solids using NMR.
Summer is also the time for the annual barbecue of the Grey group. This year, the barbecue took place on the 8th of July on Darwin Island. Despite the very English weather, the evening was full of laughs and nice food.
In July, the Grey group also organised a symposium on 'Ion dynamics in confined systems'. This symposium, held on the 9th of July, gathered worldwide scientists and was a good opportunity to discuss the current challenges in this area, and particularly in relation with energy storage systems. The conference dinner took place at the Loch Fyne, just a few steps from the Fitzwilliam and close to the city center.
April-June 2014
Spring is also the time for Grey group members to attend conferences all over the world as, for example, the 17th International Meeting on Lithium Batteries (IMLB) which took place in Como this year. Prof. Clare Grey, Dr Yan-Yan Hu and Kent Griffith attend this conference and a very nice dinner organised by Meng Jiang, former member of the Grey group, currently working for General Motors (see picture on the right, from left to right: Toyoki, Wonsub, Yongsik, Kent, Karen, Sylvio, Clare, Meng).
David Bennett, fellow of the pNMR network, is currently visiting the group and working with Andrew Pell.
Congratulations to Dr Hao Wang for his successfull viva on the 20th of May!
Congratulations to Dr Gunwoo Kim for his successfull viva on the 14th of May!
In April/May, Prof. Siegbert Schmid, from the University of Sidney, visited the group, working on Na and Li NMR of Prussian Blue.
This Spring, the group was also visited by Benjamin Delacourt, student at Université de Namur in Belgium, who was working on the synthesis and characterisation of titanium based porous materials used as anodes in lithium ion batteries.
January-March 2014
This January, the group has welcomed new members: Andrew Pell, a postdoctorate researcher, and Roberta Pigliapochi, a PhD student, both working on paramagnetic NMR; and Katie Martin, a PhD student who will be conducting research on the synthesis of electrolyte materials in collaboration with Prof. Dominic Wright.
This February, Oliver Pecher joined the lab as a new postdoctoral researcher working on sodium ion batteries. We also celebrated a very happy event in the lab (see the Social Photo Gallery). Also, congratulations to Alison Michan who was elected as an associate member of the Cambridge Nano Doctoral Training college, after presenting research at the annual Nano Showcase event.
In March group members Sylvia Britto, Michal Leskes, Alison Michan, Amy Moore, Paul Bayley and Xiao Hua presented work at the 2014 Batteries Gordon Research Conference in Ventura, California.
October - December 2013
In October group members Dr Yan-Yan Hu, Dr Michal Leskes, Amy Moore, Fiona Strobridge, Alexander Forse and Ieuan Seymour presented work at the 2013 Electrochemical Society Conference in San Francisco. PhD students David Halat, Kent Griffith and Wei Meng attended the 2013 iMR Kick-Off Workshop, held as part of the Integrated Magnetic Resonance Centre for Doctoral Training. Activities included a trip to spectrometer manufacturer Agilent UK in Oxford, as well as team-building sessions.
This autumn, the group has welcomed many new members. Postdoctorate researchers Céline Merlet researching supercapacitors as well as Maria Tsiamtsouri and Wanjing Yu researching graphene, and Tao Liu, working on lithium-air batteries and solid oxide fuel cells, joined. The group also welcomed new postgraduate students: Kent Griffith working on supercapacitors, David Halat working on fuel cell cathode materials, and Wei Meng working on all solid state batteries.
The group was visited by Lily McManus completing follow-on research work from her Master's project on Li-air batteries and Kim See working on Li-sulfur batteries.
This December, we said goodbye to Tina Jost, who has been the group's secretary for the last three years. We all wish Tina well for the future!
July - September 2013
In July the group was visited by Dr Yoshihiro Yamazaki from the California Institute of Technology to perform experiments with group member Luke Sperrin. During his stay, Dr Yamazaki gave a presentation on his research into proton-conducting perovskites.
July also saw a visit from Prof. Douglas MacFarlane from Monash University, Australia. Prof. MacFarlane gave a talk on the applications of ionic liquids in chemical, electro- and biosciences.
Another visitor to the group in July was Lorie Trognko from the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse. Lorie, who works in the research group of Prof. Patrice Simon, carried out experiments with group member Hao Wang to study ionic liquid-based supercapacitors.
Group members Beth and Phoebe went to beamline 11-ID-B at the Advanced Photon Source in Argonne, US, to perform in situ pair distribution function measurements. Phoebe also went with Hao and Sylvia to ESRF in Grenoble, France, to carry out in situ X-ray diffraction measurements on lithium-ion batteries.
The Grey group annual summer barbeque was held on 13th August in Darwin College. This involved a large quantity of excellent food and even some lessons in Scottish country dancing provided by group members Ieuan and Beth.
Finally, congratulations to group member Riza Dervisoglu, who on 10th September passed his PhD viva. Riza's examniners were Dr David Jefferson (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Saiful Islam (University of Bath). Dr Dervisoglu will now remain in the group to carry out a few months of post-doctoral research.
May-June 2013
This month PhD students Riza Dervisoglu and Ken Rosina presented their work at the RSC Electrochemistry Group and International Society of Electrochemistry London and Southeast Region Postgraduate Symposium, at University College London. Riza gave a talk entitled "17O NMR and computational study of La2NiO4+δ, a mixed ionic and electronic conductor, solid oxide fuel cell cathode material", and Ken gave a talk entitled Aluminum Fluoride Coated Li[Li1/9Ni1/3Mn5/9]O2 Cathodes for Secondary Lithium-ion Batteries", which earnt him third prize for oral presentations.
Congratulations go to PhD student Matthew Dunstan who this month won joint second prize for the Dow Sustainability and Innovation Challenge Award for his work on the development of CO2 capture materials. Also this month, PhD student Alison Michan received a 2013 Schiff Foundation Student Fellowship to continue her studies on silicon-based lithium battery cathode materials.Finally this month the group said goodbye to Dr Derek Middlemiss, who has taken up a new position at the University of Warwick. Derek has contributed tremendously to the both research and social life of the group, and will be sorely missed! We all wish him well in his new job.
March-April 2013
Congratulations to Prof. Clare Grey, who this month was awarded the 2013 Günther Laukien Prize, at the ENC conference in Asilomar, California. Clare was also awarded the IBA2013 research award at the International Battery Association conference in Barcelona.
This month the group welcomed new post-doc Paul Bayley, who previously worked in the group of Maria Forsyth at Deakin University in Australia. Paul will be working on developing in-situ NMR methods to investigate failure mechanisms in lithium ion batteries.
In March, PhD students Hao Wang and Alex Forse, gave a presentation entitled "NMR Studies of Electrode-Electrolyte Interfaces in Supercapacitors" at the Ionic Liquids at Interfaces Symposium, Oxford. At the annual 850 MHz users symposium, Warwick University, PhD student Luke Sperrin gave a talk entitled "High Field Solid-State NMR studies of proton-conducting ceramics".
PhD student Fiona Strobridge travelled to the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne, US, to carry out diffraction measurements on next-generation battery cathode materials. During this time, she was lucky enough to shake the hand of President Barack Obama, who was visiting to give a speech on clean energy solutions.
Two papers by PhD students Gunwoo Kim and Alex Forse were accepted for publication. Gunwoo's paper (DOI: 10.1021/jp312410t) concerns conduction mechanisms in the protonic conductor CsH2PO4, while Alex's paper (DOI: 10.1039/C3CP51210J) describes NMR measurements of electrolyte adsorption on novel carbide-derived carbons.
January 2013
This month the group welcomed Lorie Trognko, who visited for two weeks to carry out in-situ NMR experiments on ionic-liquid supercapacitors. Lorie is currently a PhD student working in the group of Patrice Simon (Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse) and is carrying out research into ion adsorption in nanoporous carbons.
This has also been a successful month for a number of group members who were awarded bursaries and fellowships. Phoebe Allan has been awarded a junior research fellowship with Gonville and Caius College to carry out a project to develop in-situ methods for the study of electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors. Fiona Strobridge was also awarded a £1000 bursary from the Cambridge Society of Applied Research (CSAR) to fund her PhD research project on the development and characterisation of lithium-iron-phosphate battery cathode materials. After presenting their research at the annual Nano Showcase event, John Griffin, Alex Forse and Amy Moore were elected as associate members of the Cambridge Nano Doctoral Training college, with each awarded £3,500 to spend on nano-related travel.