Congratulations to former group member Camille Blayo and current members Bea Jone and Mike Bennison on their new publication in Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry. Using azobenzene photo surfactants we show that the shape and size of micelles can affect the efficiency of the chemical reactions performed within them.

Size and Shape Matter for Micellar Catalysis using Light-Responsive Azobenzene Surfactants

Camille Blayo, Beatrice E. Jones, Michael J. Bennison, Rachel C. Evans*, Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, 2024, DOI: doi.org/10.1039/D4OB01587H

October was a month of regeneration for the PAM group.

Maggie Nelson (MPhil) and Tom Williamson (PhD) joined us for their postgraduate studies.

Dr Abi Collins returns to the group as a postdoctoral researcher working on photonic coatings for indoor solar cells.

Leah Belson and Ned Loveridge join us for their Part III projects

We also “adopted” several members from the Bennett group following Tom’s move to New Zealand: Celia Castillo Blas, Francesca Melle, Arad Lang, Chumei Ye, and Celia Chen joins on a more permanent basis to continue her PhD studies. Welcome all!

Congratulations to Nell (Helen) Tunstall García (second from left in photo) who successfully defended her PhD thesis last month. Nell has been working on the development of luminescent downshifting polymer composites as spectral conversion layers for solar cells (supported by the European Research Council SPECTRACON project). Thank you to Prof Neil Robertson (Edinburgh) and Prof Serena Best (Cambridge) for examining. Good luck with your next steps Nell – we will all miss you!

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded a Royce ICP grant in partnership with Lightricity to further develop our coating technology for photovoltaics.

In October, we said goodbye to Dr Junxin Wang who was a Marie Curie Fellow and then EPSRC Fellow in the group. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours!

Congratulations to Bea Jones whose work on X-ray induced isomerisation in photoswitchable surfactants has been published in Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. This was also Bea’s first paper as corresponding author so a double celebration!

Understanding X-ray-induced isomerisation in photoswitchable surfactant assemblies, Beatrice E. Jones*,  Camille Blayo, Jake L. Greenfield, Matthew J. Fuchter, Nathan Cowieson, and Rachel C. Evans*

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 2005–2015. https://doi.org/10.3762/bjoc.20.176

Rachel gave a keynote talk at the Beilstein Organic Chemistry Symposium: Harnessing Light Energy with Molecules in Limburg an der Lahn, Germany in September. This was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with the community and to present our highlights from our work on photo switchable liquid crystals.

Larissa gave a talk at the RSC Photophysics and Photochemistry Group Early Career Meeting 2024 at the University of Sheffield. It was also a great chance for her to catch up with our previous PAM member, Joshua!

We have been awarded funding from the European Research Council to further develop a photonic coating technology that aims to enhance the performance of solar cells indoors. This builds on research undertaken through the ERC SPECTRACON project and the EPSRC New Horizons grant.

The group got together to celebrate recent successes and to say goodbye and good luck to Dr Zhihang Wang, who has been appointed as a lecturer at the University of Derby. Zhihang joined the PAM group in February 2023 working on the ERC SPECTRACON project, focussing on integration of spectral converters in device architectures.

We wish Zhihang the best of luck in his new role and look forward to continued collaborations.