Larissa’s secondment in the US

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This summer, Larissa undertook an exciting research secondment at North Carolina State University, joining Prof. Felix Castellano’s group as Research Visitor. Together, they were exploring ways to control triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion in liquid crystal systems.  

Many thanks to Phil and his research group for the inspiring discussions, collaboration, and all the fun moments throughout her two and a half months at NC State. 

In July, Larissa participated and presented a poster at the 2025 Gordon Research Conference in Lewiston, Maine, United States, joining leading scientists to discuss the latest advances of photochemistry. She also participated in the conference’s lobster tradition, experiencing the true GRC spirit!

Congratulations to Bea on receiving the Katharine Burr Blodgett Award!

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Congratulations to Beatrice Jones who has been awarded the Katharine Burr Blodgett Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) Colloids Group. The prize is awarded annually for the best PhD thesis in colloid and interface science. Bea successfully defended her thesis entitled Harnessing Light-Responsive Structural Control in Surfactant Assemblies in December 2024. In her thesis, Bea demonstrates that the diverse and dynamic behaviours displayed by surfactants in response to light can be harnessed for numerous applications, including drug delivery, gas control for microfluidic reactions, or solar energy storage. It can be found online here: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/9f254564-5b27-4e43-a0be-5900a24f4d35

The Award was announced last month at the annual meeting of the European Colloid and Interface Society, held in Bristol, where Bea presented her work in a contributed talk. The award is named in honour of Katharine Burr Blodgett, who was the first woman to receive a PhD degree in Physics from the University of Cambridge.

Review paper published on light-responsive emulsions

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Congratulations to Jack and Bea, whose review paper on light-responsive emulsions and dispersions has been published in Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface Science!

In this review, we examine recent advances in light-responsive emulsions and dispersions, highlighting how photoactive surfactants, particles and lipids can be used to tune interfacial structure, stability and release. We also discuss the key mechanisms underpinning photoswitchable, photothermal and photodestructive behaviour, identify current challenges, and suggest future research directions.

You can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cocis.2025.101935

Congratulations Maggie!

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Congratulations to Maggie Nelson, who passed her MPhil viva earlier this month! Maggie’s research explored the effects of polymer composition for luminescent waveguide encoded lattices (LWELs).

Maggie has now begun her studies for a PhD in Materials Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We wish her the very best of luck!

New group paper published in JACS!

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Congratulations to Bea whose work on the use of lyotropic liquid crystals (LLCs) for solar-energy storage has been published in JACS! In this work, we explore the solvent-driven self-assembly of azobenzene photosurfactants (AzoPS) into LLCs for molecular solar thermal energy storage (MOST) applications for the first time. Using a combination of in-situ differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) with small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), we were able to unpick the structure-photoswitch-energy storage relationships in these materials, paving the way for accelerated design of similar, amphiphilic systems for future MOST technologies.

Many thanks to all the collaborators who contributed to the success of this project: Zhihang Wang, Martijn Zwijnenburg, Charlotte Edwards-Gayle, Kasper Moth-Poulsen and Nathan Cowieson.

You can read the paper here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.5c09267

PAM Group Participates in MC17

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In July, the 17th International conference on materials chemistry (MC17) was held in Edinburgh, with PAM group members contributing in numerous ways.

Firstly, huge congratulations to Rachel for her excellent work as co-chair of the conference. With 150 talks and 400 posters, as well as panel discussions and sponsor exhibits, the conference was a great success, bringing together scientists from the materials chemistry community across the world. Well done Rachel!

The conference also saw many excellent presentations from group members. Bea, Georgie, and Arad gave talks on their research, while Ziqiong, Arad, Fariha, Maggie, Tom, Jack, and Bea all presented posters.

Special congratulations to Fariha, for receiving a prize for her brilliant poster!

PAM Group Success at Postgraduate Seminar Day

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In June, the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy held its annual Postgraduate Seminar and Poster Day. PAM Group members Tom, Maggie and Ziqiong all presented posters on their work, while Celia gave a talk on her PhD research so far.

Special congratulations to Maggie and Ziqiong, who both received prizes for their excellent posters!

PAM Group inspires “London Wonder”

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In May, Larissa, Georgie and Bea travelled to London deliver a science workshop to a group of secondary school students as part of London Wonder, an outreach programme with schools in East London organised by Big Ideas and The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.

The workshop, “Energy Explorers”, was developed as part of the EnLighten project, funded by the group’s RSC Outreach Fund. Students had great fun learning about luminescent solar concentrators, and carrying out their own experiment to work out which colour of LSC would be best for solar energy harvesting.