Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

Natalie Stingelin is a Reader at the Department of Materials, Imperial College London, UK, where she conducts research in the broad area of organic functional materials, including organic electronics, multifunctional inorganic/organic hybrids and smart, advanced optical systems based on organic matter. She has more than 70 papers, and in 2011 she received an ERC Young Investigator Award.

1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
Many of my activities are in the field of Organic Electronics, especially organic photovoltaics. Our focus thereby is to gain a better understanding of some of the fundamental process, including charge generation, charge separation and charge transport, with the key objective to establish relevant structure/processing/property interrelationships. In addition, I have started a few projects in the Organic Photonics area. For instance, we have developed a new hybrid system of a tunable refractive index and low optical loss in the visible wave-length regime. We are now working with industry to develop this material further to e.g. produce mirrors that reflect infrared irradiation. We target thereby applications towards versatile and widely applicable heat management structures for building, cars etc.

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1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are currently focusing our research efforts on aggregation-induced emission (AIE), an unusual photophysical process in which light emission of organic luminogens is induced by aggregate formation. We are now working on the synthesis of new AIE molecules, decipherment of AIE mechanisms, and exploration of high-tech applications of the AIE materials.

2. What motivated you to focus on luminescent organic materials?
Luminescent processes of organic luminophores have traditionally been studied as isolated molecules in dilute solutions in academic laboratories but practically used in aqueous media or solid state for real-world applications where the luminophoric molecules tend to form aggregates. The conventional luminescent materials often show poor performances in the solid state due to the notorious aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect. The AIE effect is exactly opposite to the ACQ effect, which provides us a nice platform to study practically useful solid emitters. The discovery of the new AIE phenomenon has motivated us to develop new mechanistic models for luminescent processes in the condense phase and new luminescent materials for real-life applications in the solid state.

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1.      Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are studying the electronic properties that arise when inorganic nanocrystals are used as building blocks to construct mesostructured materials. This includes fabricating inorganic nanocomposite materials and mesoporous architectures. I am particularly interested in electrochemical materials including those for electrochromic devices and batteries, in which many individual properties such as electron and ion transport, optical absorption, and phase behaviour combine to determine the overall functional characteristics.

2.      What motivated you to focus on inorganic nanoscience?
Nanoscience offers a whole new frontier in manipulating properties through the arrangement of matter. Understanding how the size, shape, and arrangement of nanoscale building blocks combine with atomic scale structure and composition to determine material properties is exciting and often unexpected.

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1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are developing new methods for synthesizing complex metal oxide and chalcogenide nanocrystals.  Once we’ve developed a route and collected materials, we are currently putting a lot of effort into controlling the surface chemistry of the resulting nanocrystals.  Since small nanocrystals are predominantly surface, this is extremely important and necessary if one wants to extract any utility from these materials into a functional device.  Along those lines, we are focusing on devices for energy conversion and storage.  We are using our metal chalcogenide nanocrystals for low-cost solar cells and our metal oxide nanocrystals for dielectric capacitors.  As a synthetic chemist, I get great satisfaction when a material my group has made and labored over ends up in a device that actually works well!

2. What motivated you to focus on the synthesis and properties of nanocrystals?
Organic chemists possess an incredibly powerful toolbox of reaction chemistry that allows them to rationally design molecules with desired functionality.  Unfortunately, the toolbox for rationally designing functional inorganic nanocrystals is severely lacking.  Moreover, many synthetic preps for inorganic nanocrystals are plagued by impurities, work-up issues, low yields, and irreproducibility.  The concept of “materials by design” will never get off the ground with the existing limited design space.  We got into this area thinking we could add some synthetic perspective to the problem.

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1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are trying to integrate multiple functions in a single organic-based electronic device. In other words, we are attempting to fabricate devices like field-effect transistors that can respond simultaneously to multiple yet independent stimuli. This can be achieved by developing multi-component nanostructured materials.

2. What motivated you to focus on nanoscale architectures?
During my undergraduate studies the world of the single molecules was left mostly to theoretical predictions or even to imagination. During my thesis work, about 18 years ago, I started “playing” with the Scanning Probe Microscopies. These very powerful Microscopies allowed me to really “see” the molecules, to enter their world, and to look also at their “sociology “, i.e. at the way they interact among each other on the nanoscale generating highly ordered structures at the supramolecular level.

Naturally, after several years devoted to understand and control the generation of these ordered nanostructures I became interested into learning more and more also about their properties and how one can tailor them to develop nanoscale supramolecular functional materials.

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1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
I have been working on materials chemistry for more than 50 years. One of the main areas of my research has been transition metal oxides. I have investigated superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance and a variety of phenomena associated with metal oxides. In the last few years, my main interest has been multiferroic and magnetoelectric oxides. Another important area of interest is nanomaterials where I have been working on carbon nanotubes as well as graphene extensively in the last few years. One of my specialities is nanotubes and graphene-like materials of (non-carbon) layered inorganic materials. I am interested in inorganic and organic hybrid materials as well.

2. What motivated you to focus on solid state and materials chemistry?
When I started research in this area, there were very few practitioners in solid state and materials chemistry. I thought that I should start my work in this area since there was little known about chemistry of solids. It has been nice to see the subject grow in a big way in the last 2-3 decades.

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Dr. Aron Walsh is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath. He previously held a Marie Curie Fellowship at University College London and a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His research concerns the application and development of computational chemistry techniques for modeling the solid-state. The current focus of the Walsh group is on the systematic design of materials enhanced for energy applications.

1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
We are developing new sulfide materials for low-cost solar cells, designing oxide systems for transparent electronics, and optimising the electronic properties of metal-organic frameworks. To put materials modeling to the test, we are also working towards computer-controlled material synthesis.

2. What motivated you to focus on computational materials science?
I have always had a fascination with computers. In the 80s I had my trusty ZX Spectrum, in the 90s I had a state-of-the-art Pentium60 PC. When I got to use the national supercomputer for my final year project in computational chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, there was no turning back.

3. What are the hot topics in materials chemistry at the moment?
I predict big things for photoferroic materials, topological insulators and ion-conducting thermoelectrics. For solar cells, Cu₂ZnSnS₄ is the material of the moment with an explosion of research this year.

4. What current problem would you like to see science provide a solution to?
A use for graphene!

5. What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Interacting with scientists around the world. My collaborations with chemists and physicists in America, China, Korea, Ireland and the UK provide me with endless stimulation, inspiration and support, as well as a good excuse to travel the globe.  

6. What’s the secret to being a successful scientist?
The majority of scientists have a passion for what they do, and put in long hours trying to achieve their research goals. The perception of success is largely to do with visibility, which increasingly combines a variety of media including journal articles, conferences, the internet and social-networking. There is no magic formula, but the Research Excellence Framework may disagree!

7. Which scientist past or present do you most admire?
Gilbert N. Lewis was an exceptional physical chemist. He never won a Nobel Prize, which many would say led to his eventual death by hydrogen cyanide. His models for electron counting are still of great value to my work today, and his research was the stepping stone for Linus Pauling to provide his authoritative account of the nature of the chemical bond.

8. If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be?
My dream at ten years old was to be an accountant. No doubt, I would have been paid more, but I would have missed out on a lot of fun.

If you’re interested to learn more about research in the Walsh lab you can read a selection of papers below or check out their research pages on the group website.

     1. Magnetic properties of Fe2GeMo3N; an experimental and computational study
      J. Mater. Chem., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2JM32574H (Advance Article)

     2. Prediction on the existence and chemical stability of cuprous fluoride
      Chem. Sci., 2012,3, 2565-2569

     3. Structural and electronic properties of CuSbS2 and CuBiS2: potential absorber materials for thin-film solar cells
      Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012, 14, 7229-7233

     4. Microscopic origins of electron and hole stability in ZnO
      Chem. Commun., 2011, 47, 3386-3388

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Andrew Grimsdale was born in Waiouru, New Zealand in 1963 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Auckland, in 1990 under the supervision of Prof. R. C. Cambie. After postdoctoral research into materials for optoelectronic applications with Prof. Andrew Pelter at University of Wales, Swansea, and Prof. Andrew Holmes at the University of Cambridge, he was project leader in charge of research into conjugated polymers in the group of Prof. Klaus Müllen at Mainz from 1999-2005. After working again with Prof. Holmes at University of Melbourne, he joined the faculty of Nanyang Technological University in November 2006, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His current research interests are the synthesis of materials for optoelectronic applications and on the formation of functional nanomaterials by self-assembly. He is the author of over 100 publications (>6800 citations, h-index 35) including some major reviews on the synthesis and applications of conjugated polymers and organic nanomaterials.

1. Which research projects are you working on at the moment?
I am working on a number of projects related to energy storage and conversion, which is a major focus of research here in Singapore, as it is a country currently almost totally dependent upon imported energy supplies. I am involved in one industry funded project on developing new materials for organic solar cells. I am collaborating with two projects on batteries including new types of batteries and new materials for existing types. I am also part of a big project on trying to understand the working principles of and optimise the design of light-harvesting systems, which has obvious implications for organic photovoltaic devices and also to related areas such as solar fuels. In relation to these projects I am not just interested in making classical polymers and oligomers but also in investigating the use of self-assembly to make functional materials including nanocomposite materials. Finally I am part of a project on developing new anti-fouling coatings for ships – it is amazing how much fuel can be saved by preventing things like barnacles from growing on the sides of ships, and it is fascinating to think that an understanding of how mollusc proteins bind to surfaces could be useful for fighting global warming.

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