News and Events

December 2023

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This month Imperial College hosted the World Fuel Cell Conference. This was a really exceptional event held over three days with keynote talks from leaders in the commercialisation of fuel cell technology including Subhasish Mukerjee from Ceres Power (above left) and Alex Matínez from Johnson Matthey (above centre). We also had researchers from all across the world share their expertise during presentations and discussions. These included Lyra, Mengjun, Michalis and Chris from the group. 

There were also prizes for the best student presentations and posters during the conference. Congratulations to Mengjun and YuChen for also taking home the best presentation and best poster prizes respectively. We also managed to get a quick group photo below.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and thanks to the organisers and caterers who helped make the event a success – especially to Mengjun and Jack for their hard work!

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Colleen led a paper "Nanostructured Catalyst Layer Allowing Production of Ultralow Loading Electrodes for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells with Superior Performance" just published in ACS Applied Energy Materials. Congratulations!

 

November 2023

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The whole team prepared a showcase at the Future Energy Festival - an event open to the public - where we can answer questions about our research and enjoy a series of high energy snapshots of scientific research at Imperial College London.

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Anthony is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, and attended as the RCGI Excellence Chair to present "Keynote 1: Brazil's Role in the Global Energy Transition" at the 6th International Energy Transition Research and Innovation Conference (ETRI), organised by RCGI. The conference's theme is "Challenges of Climate Change and Energy Transition: Technological, Environmental, Social, Economic, and Political Approaches".

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A new paper on the study CO₂ reduction has been published in Angewandte Chemie:  "Time-Resolved Product Observation for CO2 Electroreduction Using Synchronised Electrochemistry-Mass Spectrometry with Soft Ionisation (sEC-MS-SI)" . Great work by Guohui and Anthony.

 

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October 2023

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 The Further FC (4^th-5^th) meeting held at the Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse with a dinner which notably took place in an atmospheric underground 'cave'.

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September 2023

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 Congratulations to Mengjun for passing her PhD viva and we are delighted Dr. Mengjun Gong will continue in the group as a researcher.

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Anthony visited the Hanoi University of Science and Technology in Vietnam, to discuss "The role of hydrogen as an energy storage medium for large scale renewable energy deployment".

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Michalis presented his work at the Electrochem 2023 conference in Bristol - an amazing acheivement before even starting as a PhD student.

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Anthony has co-authored a new article published in Nature, hopefully bringing us closer to cheap Green H₂ generation: "Phase-dependent Growth of Pt on MoS2 for Highly Efficient H2 Evolution"

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This cohort of MRes students concluded their experimental project with excellent final presentations. Well done to Haoyu, Michalis and Junxi!

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August 2023

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Lyra and Anthony are co-authors on a new paper "Single-atom Pt on Carbon Nanotubes for Selective Electrocatalysis". Congrats to the team on this one!

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July 2023

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We are sadly saying goodbye to our brilliant post-doc researcher Colleen, who is starting a new role at Johnson Matthey.

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To help raise money for Mind, Jack and Michalis played in the Staff vs. Students football match. Congratulations to Michalis and the student team on their well-fought victory too.

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The MSci and BSc students have put on an excellent of their achievements during their presentations and posters at the end of their experimental projects. Well done to Xinyi, Tingting and Clara!

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June 2023

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As a research lead on the project, Anthony and the microporous membranes team have been recognized as winner's of the 2023 Materials Chemistry Horizon Prize: Stephanie L Kwolek Prize.

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May 2023

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Anthony had science meeting at Bramble Energy and went to new premises, which has Kucernak and Brett wings. Have a look at press release for Bramble's new headquarters.

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We hosted a visit from faculty members from the University of Calgary, Canada, and Anthony attended the Calgary-London Collaboration Workshop at the Electrochemical Innovation Lab at UCL.

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In this busy month for papers, we have also published "Simultaneously Incorporating Atomically Dispersed Co-N_x Sites with Graphitic Carbon Layer-Wrapped Co₉S₈ Nanoparticles for Oxygen Reduction in Acidic Electrolyte" in ChemElectroChem. Great work by everybody involved!

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Christopher has published a review article on relevant aspects of the organic species for our flow batteries entitled "Aqueous Redox Flow Batteries: Small Organic Molecules for the Positive Electrolyte Species".

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Mengjun, Asad, and Anthony, are co-authors a paper in ACS Catalysis, published this month: "Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity in Non-Precious Single-Atom (M–N/C) Catalysts─Contribution of Metal and Carbon/Nitrogen Framework-Based Sites"

Great work by everybody involved!

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Colleen, Graham and Anthony have written a new paper, in the really underappreciated but important field of practical hydrogen utilisation in real-world conditions. Good work!

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As a start-up company that was founded by Kucernak group members, we are delighted that RFC Power has been selected to partner with Ørsted, which is discussed further in this article on the Imperial College London website.

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April 2023

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Many congratulations to Lyra for passing her PhD viva!

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March 2023

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 Anthony was invited to Zagreb to speak at the Croatia - UK Hydrogen forum.

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Anthony was invited to give a talk at the Technology Advisory Council for at National Grid ESO, the subject being "Putting electrolysers on the grid" and to advise on the electrical characteristics such as growth, scale, timeframe, and more. Really interesting!

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February 2023

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 Some of the group spent a productive weekend at the Light Source Facility, bring our flow battery to the beamline for some new insights.

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Mengjun and Anthony have co-authored a new paper "Atomically dispersed Fe in a C2N-derived matrix for the reduction of CO2 to CO" in Electrochimica Acta. Nice work!

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Anthony and previous group members Javier and Daniel have published some work on the H₂-Mn regenerative fuel cell system developed in our group: "High Performance H2−Mn Regenerative Fuel Cells through an Improved Positive Electrode Morphology"

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 Mengjun and Anthony are co-authors on a new paper "FeNC Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalyst with High Utilization Penta-Coordinated Sites"  concerning precious-metal free catalysts, which could be used in many applications including hydrogen fuel cells. Congrats on the publication!

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January 2023

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This month Anthony travelled to the Department of Applied Physics at the Univeristy of Chalmers (CTU) in Gottenburg, Sweden, to present a talk entitled 'Non precious metal catalysts for air breathing electrochemical devices: Assessing performance and surface density of active sites in acid stable materials'

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December 2022

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Anthony was invited to present at this year's H2FC Supergen conference in South Kensington.

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Chris visited the Shell plc laboratories in Amsterdam to meet the other students working on flow battery projects for clean energy storage that Shell is supporting.

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November 2022

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Anthony visited Japan to discuss UK-JP collaboration.

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September 2022

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Mengjun gave a great talk on "Reaching High Loading of Atomic Iron in Fe-N/C Oxygen Reduction Catalysts for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells" at the Electrochem conference in Edinburgh.

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August 2022

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After 6 years as a very valued post-doctoral researcher, Dr Andres Parra-Puerto, now takes up the role as a Maria Zambrano Research Fellow at the University of Alicante.

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We were delighted to host Thiago Lopes, visiting from the RCGI in São Paulo.

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Anthony presented at the SURFCAT Summer School on "The Science of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals"  which took place at DTU (Technical University of Denmark) from the 7-12^th.

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July 2022

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This month Anthony attended the ‘2022 EPSRC Fundamental Electrochemistry Workshop’, held in Tregynon, Wales. At this two-day event, delegates were tasked with discussing the state and future direction of fundamental electrochemical research in the UK.

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Anthony gave a talk entitled 'Electrocatalyst Performance Under Mass-Transport Free Conditions' - Understanding Performance Differences Between Aqueous Electrolytes and Fuel Cells" at the Gordon Research Conference on Fuel Cells at Bryant University, Rhode Island, USA.

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As a third year PhD student, Mengjun presented at the departmental PG Symposium. Mengjun presented her work on developing high site density M-N/C ORR catalysts.

 

June 2022

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Colleen and Anthony attended the Further-FC public workshop. Anthony attended in person (DLR Stuttgart, Germany) and gave a presentation, as part of the session on the project’s scientific highlights. Anthony discussed recent work on characterising CCLs (catalyst coated layers).

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Mengjun presented at the online Huawei Vision Forum at the end of this month. Her talk was entitled: ‘Platinum-free catalysts for air breathing electrochemical devices – increasing the surface density of single atom coordinated Fe sites to improve performance'.

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Anthony gave a presentation at St Andrews at the 2022 H2FC - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Supergen conference on 'Taking an idea from the laboratory to a company – the Bramble Energy Story'.

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Ben is sadly leaving us to pursue a new role as Product Manager at the battery technology company About:Energy Ltd. Ben has been a valued member of the team for the last few years with us – best of luck in your new position!

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Anthony is co-author on a recently published paper in Nature Communications discussing the development of new polymer membranes, in collaboration with colleagues from across the College, EaStCHEM, and Shell – congrats all!

“Development of efficient aqueous organic redox flow batteries using ion-sieving sulfonated polymer membranes”

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Anthony presented at IDRIC-1: Industrial Decarbonisation Showcase and also contributed to Panel 1: Low Carbon Technologies. 

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May 2022

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Mengjun attended the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) Electrochemistry Postgraduate Conference, at Loughborough University, where she presented both a flash talk and a poster on her work: ‘Reaching High Loading of Atomic Iron in Fe-NC Oxygen Reduction Catalysts for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells’.

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Anthony gave a talk at the University of Manchester Chemistry department on "Non precious metal catalysts for air breathing electrochemical devices: Assessing performance and surface density of active sites in acid stable materials"

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Congratulations to Guohui, Youxin (both now group alumni) and Anthony, who’s previous work using the GAME system, coupled with mass spectrometry, to monitor CO2 Electroreduction has been published in ACS Catalysis.

“Real-Time In Situ Monitoring of CO2 Electroreduction in the Liquid and Gas Phases by Coupled Mass Spectrometry and Localized Electrochemistry”

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Ander has submitted his MSci thesis (‘Development of a novel infrared spectroelectrochemical characterisation method for oxygen evolution reaction on iridium oxide using iGAME’), thus concluding his time with us in the group. Best of luck with your next steps Ander!

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Congratulations to Jun who has passed his PhD viva with minor corrections. Congrats Dr Wu - we wish you the best of luck with your future career!

Jun’s thesis was entitled: ‘Design, Synthesis and Electrocatalytic Properties of Cobalt Based Electrocatalysts’.

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Anthony is co-author on a paper recently published in Nature Communications exploring Polysulfide-Air Redox Flow Batteries (PSA RFBs). This is in collaboration with colleagues from across the College, UCl, RFC Power, WMG and Addionics. Congratulations to all involved.

“A cost-effective alkaline polysulfide-air redox flow battery enabled by a dual-membrane cell architecture”

 

April 2022

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Asad (now group alumnus) and Mengjun’s Non-PGM work has been published in Nature Catalysis. This interesting paper highlights the synthesis of high-metal content (7wt%) single atomic Fe-NC ORR catalysts, with excellent ORR performance in PEM fuel cells. This is the culmination of a lot of hard work, congratulations Asad, Mengjun, Anthony and all collaborators.

“High loading of single atomic iron sites in Fe–NC oxygen reduction catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells”

This work also received quite a lot of press attention. Relevant articles can be found on various news sites, for example: Imperial College News, The Times, Daily Express, The Engineer, Hydrogen Fuel News, Phys.org, Science Magazine.

Further news stories and metrics can be found on the Nature website.

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Congratulations to Ben, who has also now completed his PhD, passing his viva with minor corrections. Many congratulations Dr Simon! Thoroughly deserved and we look forward to having you back working with us soon!

Ben’s thesis was entitled: ‘Electrode, Electrocatalyst and Electrolyte Development for Hybrid Redox Flow Batteries’

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As part of the annual Imperial-Shell meeting, Ben, Chris, Andres and Anthony hosted colleagues from across Imperial and Shell for an in-person dinner, catch-up and technical meeting for RFB research, where Chris gave an update on his recent work, Ben gave a summary of his PhD findings and Anthony gave a talk on the development and use of redox-flow batteries in real-world situations.

 

March 2022

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Several of our recent MRes students were finally able to attend an in-person graduation ceremony (postponed last year due to Covid). Congratulations to Junyi who won the award for best dissertation!

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Mengjun has had her recent work published in ‘Catalysis Science & Technology’. This paper explores the effective use of an Fe-N/C catalyst for Mukaiyama epoxidations of aldehydes. Congratulations to Mengjun, and all involved.

“Using molecular oxygen and Fe–N/C heterogeneous catalysts to achieve Mukaiyama epoxidations via in situ produced organic peroxy acids and acylperoxy radicals”

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Congratulations to Muhang, who has now completed her PhD after passing her viva with Minor corrections. Many congratulations Dr Xiao! We wish you all the best with your next steps.

Muhang's thesis was entitled: ‘Water Oxidation in Acid Utilising Precious and Non-precious Metal Electrocatalysts’

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Bramble Energy, a spin out company which Anthony co-founded back in 2015, have recently secured £35 million in investment to expand. This includes increasing their UK-based team to 100 and rolling out their products globally.

Bramble Energy ‘is fast becoming a leading hydrogen fuel cell provider’ and this additional funding will also ‘provide a springboard for the deployment of zero emission projects with commercial partners’.

Further information can be found in news articles, either on the College news site or Bramble's press release.

 

January 2022

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At the end of January we held our postponed Christmas party. This was a fun night of bowling, food, drinks and secret Santa. Thanks everyone for coming and Merry Christmas!

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This month saw the return of the Electrochemistry Network seminar series: ‘Advanced Methods in Electrochemistry’. Anthony joined with Ifan, in a two-part special, to present the second instalment of this series entitled: ‘Measuring Electrochemical Kinetics’.

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Anthony attended the RFC Power technical meeting. This meeting was very successful, and company is making strong progress.

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Anthony has co-founded a new company ‘Smart Megawatt Stack (SMS) Fuel Cell Systems’ with other academics from across Imperial and in collaboration with The Electric Aviation Group (EAG). They will strive to develop megawatt scale fuel cell stack systems, initially for the aviation sector, with high gravimetric and volumetric power densities.

A press release can be found on the EAG website.

This has been reported in several news articles across the sector, such as on: Future Flight, Aviator, Future Transport and Hydrogen Central, to name a few.

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Andres, Anthony and previous group members Javier, Matt and Zhuo, have had their work on CAG electrodes for vanadium redox flow batteries published. Congratulations all.

“Carbon Aerogel Based Thin Electrodes for Zero-Gap all Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries – Quantifying the Factors Leading to Optimum Performance”

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Anthony is co-author on a recent paper, in collaboration with colleagues from the ESE Department and OceansLab, discussing the merits of compressed and liquid hydrogen, as well as ammonia, for marine freighters and water taxis.

“System-level comparison of ammonia, compressed and liquid hydrogen as fuels for polymer electrolyte fuel cell powered shipping”

December 2021

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Colleen and Lyra have had their work measuring the ORR ex situ performance of electrocatalysts published in ACS Catalysis.

“Toward Understanding the Utilization of Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysts under High Mass Transport Conditions and High Overpotentials”

 

November 2021

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We wished Colleen congratulations on the "birthday" of her son Rupert! We celebrated and there was a cake.

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Ben, with colleagues from across Imperial and MIT, has had recent work published - investigating the effects of electrode microstructure and electrolyte on RFBs. Great work Ben, and many congratulations to all involved.

"Combining electrochemical and imaging analyses to understand the effect of electrode microstructure and electrolyte properties on redox flow batteries"

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The RSC panel discussion at which Anthony spoke back in October is now available to view online. This formed part of a series of events, held in the run up to COP26, and this particular panel discusses “the latest chemistry which may open up a new hydrogen economy as we replace fossil fuels in power, transport and industry”. (More info can be found on the RSC website: 'Chemistry and COP26'.)

 

October 2021

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 Anthony Spoke at the first UK-India Green Hydrogen Science Policy Dialogue.

^{[Images: @UKinIndia (The British High Commission in India), twitter.com]}

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This month our department (co-organised by Colleen) supported the annual Wear Red Day as part of the ‘Show Racism the Red Card Initiative’.

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Representatives from Johnson Matthey were able to join Lyra for the first in-person quarterly progress review since before the pandemic. Lyra presented updates on her recent work and was able to take the visitors for a quick tour of our new labs.

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Anthony was a speaker at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) panel session entitled: ‘The Chemistry of Hydrogen Production and Use’.

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For the EU project ‘Further FC’, Colleen and Anthony attended various successful meetings in recent weeks. Both the month 21 progress meeting and the mid-term review meeting were held, where the partners gave project updates.

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To mark the start of the new term, the department arranged for 1^st and 2^nd year undergraduates to meet their personal tutors, in person, for a spot of bowling at the local alley.

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This month we saw 2 new PhD students and 2 new MSc students join our group. Welcome Mark, Ander and Taiwo and welcome back Chris!

 

September 2021

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Anthony is co-author on a recent article published with colleagues from across Imperial, Chalmers (Chalmers Tekniska Högskola) and DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt).

"Structural Power Performance Targets for Future Electric Aircraft"

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Anthony, Ben and Chris, attended the ‘International Shell Advanced Energy Storage Battery Conference’, which Anthony presenting recent work on RFBs.

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The first hybrid (in-person and virtual) event, since the pandemic began, was held at MSRH this month: the PEPR launch – celebrating the opening of the new Centre for Pulse Electron Paramagnetic Resonance. At which Anthony presented recent work carried out with Ben and Dr Alberto Collauto, the facility manager, utilising some of the new equipment the centre has to offer.

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Anthony provided a talk on “Developments in electrolytic hydrogen generation” and took part in two panel sessions at this year’s ‘Supergen Net Zero Conference’: ‘Hydrogen and fuel cells in a net zero world’ and ‘Collaborating for net zero, an industry perspective’. Recordings and further information can be found on the Supergen website.

 

August 2021

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 Anthony is co-author on a recent paper with colleagues from the ‘Structural Power Composites Team’ at imperial.

"The Influence of Fabrication Parameters on the Electrochemical Performance of Multifunctional Structural Supercapacitors"

 

June 2021

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The House of Lords’ Science and Technology Select Committee have released their first report as part of the inquiry into “Role of batteries and fuel cells in achieving Net Zero”, for which Anthony acted as a witness back in March: “1st report - Battery strategy goes flat: Net-zero target at risk”. The report and copies of all evidence transcripts can be found on the UK Parliament website.

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Anthony also gave a talk at the ‘Advanced Materials Network: MISE* Finale Workshop’. (*Multiscale tuning of Interfaces and Surfaces for Energy applications). His talk was entitled: "Non precious metal catalysts for air breathing electrochemical devices: Assessing performance and surface density of active sites.”

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Anthony presented at the Pegasus 2021 technical workshop / webinar: 'PGM (Platinum Group Metal) Free Catalysts for ORR (Oxygen Reduction Reaction) for PEMFC'. Anthony spoke on “Nitrite and nitric oxide as probe molecules to assess active site density in non-precious metal catalysts – in situ and ex situ measurements”

 

 

May 2021

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Anthony presented at the NECEM (North East Centre for Energy Material) ‘Electrochemical energy storage symposium to honour Prof Ulrich Stimming’. Anthony’s talk was entitled: “The hydrogen oxidation and evolution reaction under acidic conditions – new insights into electrocatalysis on nanoparticles”.

 

April 2021

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Anthony gave a talk at UCL’s Material Chemistry Department, entitled: “Hydrogen-X (X=Vanadium, Manganese, Organic) flow batteries - chemistries for low cost, large capacity grid scale energy storage”.

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Asad and Anthony attended the ‘CRESCENDO’ project progress meeting.

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Lyra presented her work about optimising the ‘Floating Electrode’ method at the Johnson Matthey Academic Conference (JMAC).

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 Jun’s recent work on Co-N/C catalysts has just been published. Congratulations Jun, Asad, Guohui and Anthony.

“Highly Selective O2 Reduction to H2O2 Catalyzed by Cobalt Nanoparticles Supported on Nitrogen-Doped Carbon in Alkaline Solution” 

March 2021

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A further Fe-N/C paper has been accepted for Asad and Anthony, for work with Dr Paul Boldrin, Dr Daniel Malko and colleagues at TU Darmstadt – congrats all!

“Deactivation, reactivation and super-activation of Fe-N/C oxygen reduction electrocatalysts: Gas sorption, physical and electrochemical investigation using NO and O2”

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A new paper on Fe-N/C catalyst materials has just been accepted. Congratulations Asad, Mengjun and Anthony!

“Development of a highly active Fe-N-C catalyst with the preferential formation of atomic iron sites for oxygen reduction in alkaline and acidic electrolytes”

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Anthony provided evidence to the ‘House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee’ as part of an inquiry into “the Role of batteries and fuel cells in achieving Net Zero”, alongside Prof. Andrea Russel and Prof. John Irvine. Details, recording and transcript can be found on the UK Parliament website.

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Colleen and Anthony attended the ‘Further FC’ project progress meeting.

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Anthony and previous group member Daniel are co-authors on a recent paper:

“Superalkali–Alkalide Interactions and Ion Pairing in Low-Polarity Solvents”

 

February 2021

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Anthony also presented at this month’s ‘FONS Founders Forum’ here at Imperial – an event aimed to share knowledge in academic entrepreneurship.

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Anthony co-chaired and presented in the ‘H2FC Innovation Workshop 2021’ session “Fuel Cells for Transport and Stationary Power”. Details of the event: “Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research Challenges and Opportunities – An Industrial Perspective”.

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A recent paper stemming from the CRESCENDO project has been published – congratulations Asad, Anthony, and all those involved.

“Effects of the induced micro- and meso-porosity on the single site density and turn over frequency of Fe-N-C carbon electrodes for the oxygen reduction reaction”

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As part of the ‘Advanced Methods in Electrochemistry’ seminar series hosted by the Electrochemistry Network here at Imperial, Anthony shared the stage with Dr Ifan Stephens to provide lectures on “Measuring Electrochemical Kinetics”

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Dr Guohui Zhang has moved on to a new position at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics – where he will hold the position of ‘Associate Professor of Chemistry’. Congratulations Guohui, and best of luck with your new role.

Dec 2020

We had a vitual Christmas party within the group. Thanks everyone for the hard work and wish all of us a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony attended the Royal Society Net Zero Aviation workshop to discuss opportunities and changllenges using clean energy resources to power aircrafts.

Welcome the new master students- Mingyu, Pan, Christopher, Sofian, Derek and Wuyi, to the group!

Nov 2020

Anthony gave a talk at Imperial Tech. Pitch event: Transition to Zero Pollution.

Ellie won a David Phillips prize for outreach and community support. Congrats to her!

Oct 2020

Ellie has started her new job at RFC power.

Anthony and Colleen had the third meeting for Further-FC, an EU consortium project.

Welcome Mingyu and Panayiotis to the group to carry out MRes projects!

Bid farewell to South Kensington campus! Many thanks for hosting us for the past many years there! We do appreciate things go along nicely and safely all the way. All of us have spent many happy times in the labs and the office, and cherish the moments when carrying out research activities in such a great area surrounded by world-famous sites, such as the museums and parks. We will miss this experience a lot and I am sure people will go back to visit our home place now and then! For the years yet to come, the group will start a new era in White City, and at the same, thank everyone from the group for making the move happen. Good luck!

Ben presented his work at PRiME 2020 joint meeting. Good job!

Anthony gave a talk at Imperial/UBS Webinar Series on Hydrogen.

Our collaborative work on non-precious metal catalysts publishes in Energy Environ. Sci. has been highlighted by Nature Catalysis.

Sep 2020

Our another paper entitled 'Electrocatalyst performance at the gas/electrolyte interface under high mass transport conditions: optimization of the “floating electrode” method' has also been accepted in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. Congratulation to Lyra!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our paper entitled 'Controllable heteroatom doping effects of CrxCo2-xP Nanoparticles: A Robust Electrocatalyst for Overall Water Splitting in Alkaline Solutions' has been accepted in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. Congratulation to Jun, Andres and Lyra!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony visited Bramble's new building and looked at the setup on site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony gave a talk to Fuellers on fuel cells.

 

 

 

 

 The master students had their master viva presentations. Well done to Qian, Ellie and Huey and thanks for the hard work!

Aug 2020

Many congratulation to Lyra on winning the presentation runner-up prize in Energy session at the Postgraduate Symposium 2020!

The H₂ fuel cell startup company, Bramble Energy, which was cofounded by Anthony, secured a 5 million funding. Many congratulations. Please read the following page for details: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/201113/fuel-cell-startup-powers-5m-series/

A Collaborative work 'Self-assembling two-dimensional nanophotonic arrays for reflectivity-based sensing' has been accepted in Chem. Sci.. Congrats to Anthony!

July 2020

Our paper entitled 'Gas Accessible Membrane Electrode (GAME): A Versatile Platform for Elucidating Electrocatalytic Processes Using Real-Time and in Situ Hyphenated Electrochemical Techniques' has been accepted in ACS Catal.. Congrats to Guohui!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our paper entitled 'Assessing electrocatalyst hydrogen activity and CO tolerance: Comparison of performance obtained using the high mass transport ‘floating electrode’ technique and in electrochemical hydrogen pumps' has been accepted in Appl. Catal. B. Congrats to Colleen!

 

 

 

 

 

Our collaborative work on non-aqueous vandium redox flow batteryhas been accepted in Batteries. Congrats to Javier!

On 24th July, the PhD students presented their work at the Postgraduate Symposium. Well done to Lyra, Jun and Muhang!

June 2020

Our paper entitled 'Poison mitigation strategies for the use of impure hydrogen in electrochemical hydrogen pumps and fuel cells' has been accepted in J. Power Sources. Congrats to Colleen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A collabortive work entitled 'Establishing reactivity descriptors for platinum group metal (PGM)-free Fe–N–C catalysts for PEM fuel cells' has been accepted in Energy Environ. Sci.. Congrats to Daniel, Asad and Anthony!

 

 

 

 

 

Since the reopenning of the College, we have been divided into two subgroups and running in cohorts. People take turns to pop to the lab and office, while strictly following the rules outlined by the college. We know it is a tough time, but we are trying our best to get the work done! Wish all well when travelling back and forth!

May 2020

We held the first-ever cloud group meeting with members scattering in many corners of the world, due to the coronavirus epidemic. At this speical time, we wish everyone can stay safe and healthy!

Our paper entilted 'Hydrogen/Vanadium Hybrid Redox Flow Battery with enhanced electrolyte concentration' has been accepted in Energy Storage Mater.. Congrats to Javier, Junyi and Andres!

 

 

 

 

 

Our paper entitled 'A quick and versatile one step metal–organic chemical deposition method for supported Pt and Pt-alloy catalysts' has been accepted in RSC Adv.. Congrats to Colleen and Jack!

March 2020

Anthony and Colleen went to France for the Kickoff meeting of the Further-FC EU H2020 project. Of course it was followed by a group  dinner!

February  2020

Our paper entitled 'Electrochemical Measurement of Intrinsic Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity at High Current Densities as a Function of Particle Size for Pt4–xCox/C (x = 0, 1, 3) Catalysts' has been accepted in ACS Catal.. Congrats to Chris and Lyra!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony, Colleen and Jack attended the H2FC Supergen Research Conference 2020 held at the University of Nottingham on 17-18 Feb. Colleen gave a keynote presentation.

 

On 13th Feb, We were part of Imperial Lates! A fun night talking our research with people from different backgrounds.

 

On the same day, Andres and Anthony attented the LiSTAR projcet kickoff meeting at the Whity City campus.

January 2020

Happy New Year!

On 30th Jan, Colleen presented her work about 'Reformate Gas Purification using the Electrochemical Hydrogen Pump' at the Hydrogen Purification Workshop held by NPL.

Our paper entitled 'Hydrogen/functionalized benzoquinone for a high-performance regenerative fuel cell as a potential large-scale energy storage platform' has been accepted in J. Mater. Chem. A. Congrats to Javier, Andres and Rutao!

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony and Asad attended CRESCENDO 24M progress meeting on 28-29th January 2020, which was hosted by Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

 

December 2019

Many congratulations to Colleen on her great wedding! Wish the newly-weds joy and happiness for many years to come!! 

November 2019

We were part of the Energy Showcase Event organised by the Energy Futures Lab and happy to present our research to the public!  

 

The project cluster VOLUMETRIQ - INSPIRE - GAIA - CRESCENDO - PEGASUS has won the Best Success Story award FCH JU 2019 for Driving Fuel Cell Technology Forward in Brussels.  Congratulations to all for the advances in CRESCENDO that have caught the eye of the nominations committee and the voting community!!

October 2019

Our paper entitled 'Supported Transition Metal Phosphides: Activity Survey for HER, ORR, OER, and Corrosion Resistance in Acid and Alkaline Electrolytes' has been accepted in ACS Catal. Congrats to Andres!  

                                                                

September 2019

Anthony gave a plenary talk at Italian Electrochemical Society meeting in Padova.

Lyra and Jack pitched the vision of Hydrogen and Fuel Cells as the future of transport to secondary school students in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style session at the Natural History Museum. Their presentation generated lots of thoughtful questions from the students, and they were successful in ‘winning’ the session.

 

 

Asad gave a talk on non-precious metal catalysts at the Electrochemical Science and Engineering General Group Meeting.

 

The group attended the SElectrochem 2019 conference and enjoyed the great talks and posters. Contragtulations to Ben on winning a Faraday poster prize! And many thanks goes to Colleen for co-organising this event.

 

Asad gave an oral presentation in the 'Electrolysis and Fuel Cell Discussions (EFCD) 2019' conference that was held on 15-18 September 2019 in La Grande Motte, France. The title of his talk was 'Increasing the population of oxygen reduction active sites in Fe-N/C catalysts'.

 

Our MRes students presented their work at the departmental MRes Symposium. They all did a fantastic job, well done! You deserve a nice break now.

August 2019

Congratulations to all the MRes students on completing and submitting their projects! 

July 2019

We are organising an exciting electrochemistry conference to be held at Imperial College on Thursday 19^th September. 

The SElectrochem 2019 conference is a one-day event aimed at early career researchers in the field of electrochemistry (including batteries, fuel cells, catalysis and corrosion) in the South-East region of the UK research network – a chance to share ideas, present works and form new collaborations.

Talks with a twist! To keep things fresh and encourage discussion and networking, we’re inviting researchers to contribute posters and support these with a quick-fire ‘pitch’, delivered during the oral presentation sessions, to pique interest and stimulate conversation during the following interactive sessions. There will be cash prizes for the best posters and pitches! 

In addition, we’re delighted to have keynote talks from several leading academics across the field of electrochemistry and from industry, covering a breadth of views and interests.  A number of generous sponsors will also be on hand to discuss professional body membership, career opportunities, lab products and more.

The bargain ticket price of £10 for the event will cover lunch and refreshments, including a networking drinks reception at the end of the day. For more details, please check the link:

https://estore.imperial.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-engineering/dyson-school-of-design-engineering/selectrochem-2019/selectrochem-2019

 

Some group members made their way to the Dimond Light Source to attend the 'Operando and In Situ Methods for Energy Materials Workshop' on 12th July. Fascinating to see how the community intergrate surface characterisation techniques with energy research.

 

 

 

Fuel Cell powered cars from Imperial, UCL and NPL got together at the STFC Batteries Network Annual Meeting 2019 – 1st /2nd  July – at Cosener’s House, Abingdon where Anthony had an invited talk.

June 2019

We were part of Imperial Festival held from 29 June to 30 June! Fantastic opportunities of introducing our research to the public and we were thrilled to be flooded by all kindes of questions from people with great interests. A bright future is being built up for the hydrogen energy. Very well done to everyone and special thanks go to Colleen! WHAT A TEAM, thank you all!

 

Our group logo is alive now! Credits go to Andres, very well done!

 

We successfully hosted CRESCENDO 18M progress meeting on June 6-7, 2019 at Imperial College London. Around 20 participants from different project partners including CNRS, CEA, TUB, UNIPD, JMFC and Pretexo attended the meeting.

May 2019

Anthony and Colleen went for a MEMPHYS project meeting in Geel, Belgium on 27-28 May, and lots of discussion was going on.

February 2019

On Feb 8^th, Anthony was in Turin, present at the the First Italian Electrochemical Discussions: Latest Insights on PGM-free Catalysts for Energy Systems and Fuel Cells.

 

January 2019

Happy New Year!

Anthony gave a presentation about Fe-N/C catalysts and floating electrode system at Wuhan University, China and also presented at the 2nd China-UK Policy Dialogue on Energy Storage meeting in Dalian. Back to Europe later, Anthony delivered the updates on the Crescendo project in Grenobe, France.

 

At the end of the month, some members of the group visited the University of Warwick to have the H2FC SUPERGEN 2019 meeting. Lot of talks and discussion were going on regarding hydrogen energy and fuel cell. A nice and fruitful experience!

 

December 2018

From the 9th to 15th December, Anthony and Colleen were in Bangalore, India for the ElChemRoutes conference and discussed cooperation opportunities with India universities. 

November 2018

After the whole day 'Renewable Fuel Generation and Energy Storage at Imperial' symposium in White City, most of the group had a home-style hotpot at Jun's place. Fun night!

September 2018

Many congratulations to our master students - Alan, Yiming, Rutao and Shuang on finishing their projects. Well done and wish them a bright future!

August 2018

Anthony was invited to give a Kenote seminar at the International Symposium in Green Energy Conversion in Kofy, Japan.

 

 

Anthony went to Gordon Research Conference for Fuel Cells, held in Bryant University, RI, the US.

July 2018

Erasmus student Simon left the group. Thanks for his hard work here and good luck with his reasearch in Berkeley! 

June 2018

Our fantastic visitor Jens finished his 4-month research in the group and went back to Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). Before leaving, he delivered his summary lecture on CT imaging of floating electrodes system during the group meeting. Good luck with him in Switzerland and he will be missed by all of us!

 

Ben Simon went to the first ‘New England-International Redox Flow Battery Conference’ hosted by MIT’s Brushett group. There were many interesting talks, among them, from Prof. Bazant, Prof. Chiang and members of the Brushett, Aziz and Brandon research groups.  The talks were followed by lab tours and interesting discussions about flow batteries!

 

Anthony and Colleen attended the second MEMPHYS meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia hosted by Institut "Jožef Stefan" on 4th and 5th June, and this meeting included partners from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Slovenia. Progress of work packages and plans for future research were discussed by the partners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colleen volunteered at the Imperial 'Arts and Science Mash Up' community outreach day on 9th June. 'The local White City community explored cutting-edge research with creative games, demos and workshops as part of the Hammersmith and Fulham Arts Festival.' See more details about the event here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/arts-and-science-mash-up-tickets-46398290536#

May 2018

Daniel left the group and went back to Germany. But we will surely hear from him now and then as the SweetGen is here! Wish him a bright future! 

 

 

Anthony was invited to give a plenary talk at the Modval 2018 conference in Aarhus switzerland.

Javier and Andres are presenting at the ECS meeting in Seattle. Please see the abstracts of their work here: 

Metal Phosphides As Electrocatalyst and Supports for PEM Fuel Cells

Low Cost PCB Fuel Cells Based for Small Electronic Applications

The Use of Temperature-Programmed Desorption to Explain the Electrochemical Behaviour of PGM-Free PEFC Cathode Catalysts

Dr. Colleen Jackson joined the group as a post-doctoral fellow investigating electrocatalysts for hydrogen electrochemical compression, namely for the hydrogen oxidation and hydrogen evolution reactions. Welcome!

March 2018

Kieran left the group to do further research in Toronto. The group went out for a dinner and drinks together with lots of fun. Wish him all the best in future and look forward to seeing him soon!

 

March 2018

Kieran was a member of a panel at Citibank's Global Resources Conference, with the topic of "How Long is the Road for Autocatalysts?". He gave an outline of advances in fuel cell technology and the likely impact on PGM supplies.

February 2018

Welcome to Ben Simon, who is starting a PhD in the group and will be jointly supervised by Anthony and Nigel Brandon.

January 2018

There was a kickoff meeting for a new EU framework 2020-funded project (Crescendo) which is focussing on non-precious metal catalyst for fuel cells. The project is being performed with a number of universities and companies across Europe. The project partners are CNRS FR, Uni. Montpellier FR, Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells Ltd UK, BMW DE, Tech. Uni. Berlin DE, CEA FR, Uni. Padova IT and Pretexo FR.

Daniel was awarded a 3-month fellowship for the techcelerate program to learn about entrepreneurship and dveloping a business.

December 2017

Anthony gave a departmental talk at the Department of Chemistry, University of Birmingham (Hosted by Dr Melanie Britton)

Javier gave a talk at the UK-MIT redox flow battery symposium , Imperial College London

Anthony, Kieran, Daniel, Martin and Andreas all presented at the H2FC SuperGEn conference in St. Andrews.

November 2017

Welcome to our new MRes students Yiming Han, Rutao Liu, Shuang Wu and Alan Mamand who will be doing their research projects in the Kucernak group for the next few months. 

There was a consortium meeting for the MEMPHYS project in London for all of our European partners over two days. Progress of work packages and plans for future research were discussed by the partners from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Slovenia.

Anthony gave a talk at Toyota Central R&D, Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, an Invited speaker at the 21th International Symposium on Batteries, Fuel Cells and Capacitors (ISBFCC21) in the 58th Battery Symposium in Japan (BSJ58) at Fukuoka, Japan on Nov. 14-16, 2017 and an invited talk at  the 4th International Conference on Advanced Electromaterials (ICAE 2017) in Jeju, South Korea. Kieran also attended ICAE 2017, presenting a poster.

Anthony and Kieran attended the UK-Korea meeting for the project "INNOVATIVE CONCEPTS FROM ELECTRODES TO STACK"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 2017

Anthony gave an invited plenary talk at the Electrochemical Society Meeting at National Harbour in Washington DC.

Welcome to our new PhD students, Xiaoqian and Jun, who both did masters degrees at Imperial last year and to Muhang who is joinging us fresh from a masters at Birmingham,

September 2017

Javier and Daniel went to Japan to the 17th IUPAC Macrocycle Conference to give talks and drink sake. Both objectives were sucessfully achieved.

Congratulations to our MRes students for submitting their theses, presenting their work in front of their peers and colleagues from the college and completing their vivas. Well done, Danlei Li (off to do a PhD with Richard Compton at Oxford), Jun Wu (staying in the group for a PhD, glutton for punishment), Madeleine Laitz (starting a PhD at MIT) and Yanjun Guo (still deciding what she wants to do, no pressure).

Especial congratulations to Yanjun Guo and Madeleine Laitz who both got 1st prize in their respective sections (Catalysis and Green Chemistry).

Congratulations to Daniel and Anthony,  Electrochem Comm. accepted " Kinetic isotope effect in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) over Fe-N/C catalysts under acidic and alkaline conditions."

Congratulations to Chris Zalitis and Anthony, the Journal of Materials Chemistry A paper accepted " Design principles for platinum nanoparticles catalysing the electrochemical hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions: edges are much more active than facets".

Congratulations to Yunuen and Anthony for publication of Nature Materials "Electrotuneable Nanoplasmonic Liquid Mirror" http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4969.html?foxtrotcallback=true

Anthony also spent a week in Nanjing China at the conference "Low- and Non- Pt Catalysts for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells"

August 2017

August was pretty low-key.

July 2017

Javier and Daniel attended the president's garden party to accept the President’s Award for Excellence in Research 2017 on behalf of the Kucernak group.

Congratulations to Guohui who graduated from his PhD at the University of Warwick. Here is a picture of him rocking the Doctoral hat.

June 2017

Kieran presented an invited talk on fuel cell poisoning mitigation at the STFC conference in Abingdon.

Anthony went to the Birmingham FC & Hydrogen conference. A spinout from the Kucernak group, Bramble energy, had a stand. 

Anthony also went to Vancouver for a CarpeFC fuel cell network meeting then gave a talk at Ballard Fuel Cells.

May 2017

The Kucernak group won a President’s Award for Excellence in Research 2017 – Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The announcement is here.

April 2017 

Jacek and Matt are also leaving the Kucernak group this month. Jacek worked in the group for three years developing coatings for bipolar plates and will continue his coating research in industry. Matt is staying in fuel cell research and is moving to Vancouver to take up a position with Ballard Fuel Cells.

RFC power, a redox flow battery spinout from the group involving Anthony and Javier, was selected to join the Climate-KIC accelerator programme.

March 2017 

Best of luck to Tiziana who is leaving the group to rejoin industry, starting a new research project at Arvia Technologies in Manchester.

February 2017 

Congratulations to Daniel who won the Chemistry Department award for best PhD thesis. 

January 2017

The Kucernak group had a sucessful grant application as part of an EU framework 2020-funded project “MEMPHYS: (MEMbrane based Purification of HYdrogen System)”. The MEMPHYS projects involves the application of multiple hydrogen sources with integrated compression up to 200 bar, which significantly facilitates the transport and storage of hydrogen. Work at Imperial College London will examine new hydrogen oxidation catalysts, and advanced catalytic cleaning processes as part of the anode development.

December 2016

Anthony, Kieran, Javier and Daniel all presented talks at the H2FC Supergen conference in Belfast.

November 2016

Welcome to our new MSci and MRes students Madeleine Laitz, Xiaoqian Lin, Joshua Sucher, Jun Wu, Danlei Li, Yanjun Guo and Sung-Ho Lee who will be working in the group for the next months.

Daniel and Anthony published a JACS paper ' Performance of Fe-N/C Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysts toward NO2-, NO, and NH2OH Electroreduction: From Fundamental Insights into the Active Center to a New Method for Environmental Nitrite Destruction'. The open access link is here.

Anthony, Kieran and Biraj published a paper on fuel cell poisoning in Electrochimica Acta entitled 'Using corrosion-like processes to remove poisons from electrocatalysts: a viable strategy to chemically regenerate irreversibly poisoned polymer electrolyte fuel cells'. The link is here.

Javier, Anthony and their collaborators in the Earth Science Department published 'Performance Enhancement of Reduced Graphene Oxide-Modified Carbon Electrodes for Vanadium Redox-Flow Systems' in ChemElectrochem. The link is here.

October 2016

Congratulations to Daniel who submitted his PhD thesis and was awarded a 2016 EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship to continue with his research in the Kucernak group.

Daniel also managed to publish a paper in Nature Communications this month, along with Anthony and Thiago Lopes, who is a former postdoc in the Kucernak group. The paper is entitled 'In situ electrochemical quantification of active sites in Fe–N/C non-precious metal catalysts' and outlines a method to determine the number of catalytically active sites in non-precious metal catalysts for fuel cells. The accepted manuscript is available here.

Anthony, Kieran and Max all went to Hawaii to present the Electrochemical Society PRiMe conference 2016. Anthony presented an invited talk on 'Modelling and Experimental Results for the Hydrogen Oxidation/Hydrogen Evolution Reactions: New Insights into the Performance of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers, Kieran presented 'Metal meshes as GDls for PEMFCs' and Max talked about 'Extending the Life-Time of Low Cost Fuel Cells'.

Anthony also published a paper with Leonora Velleman, a former group member, in Nanoscale entitled 'Tuneable 2D self-assembly of plasmonic nanoparticles at liquid | liquid interfaces'. The article due to be featured on the front cover of the next issue, the accepted manuscript is here.

September 2016

Congratulations to our MRes students, Kai-Ling, Pip, Dong and Yihong who completed their courses by presenting their research to the members of the department. Also, well-done to Kai-Ling who won first prize for her presentation.

The Kucernak group has been awarded a grant by the EU under the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking to investigate membrane-based hydrogen production and purification with a number of partners from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Slovenia.

Matt attended the Gordon Research conference on Fuel cells in Stonehill College, MA to present a poster about the recent discoveries made using the floating electrode.

Daniel and Anthony published a paper entitled 'Mechanistic insights into the ORR on Metal–N–C electrocatalysts under fuel cell conditions' in ChemElectroChem. The article is here.

August 2016

Daniel attended the International Society of Electrochemistry conference in the Hague to present his paper on ‘In-situ electrochemical quantification of active sites in Fe-N/C non-precious metal catalysts’.

June 2016

Congratulations to the Sweet Gen team, a spinout from the Kucernak group, who won the first prize in the RSC Emerging Technologies Competition, Food and Water section. Their project is entitled 'Abiotic wastewater fuel cell for water remediation and electricity generation'. 

SweetGen Ltd’s abiotic fuel cell-like system produces electricity from organic contaminants which are found in wastewater produced in a number of different industries. The system also has the additional benefit of cleaning these organic contaminants from the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 2016

Welcome to Tiziana, Andres and Martin who have joined the group and will be working on the abiotic wastewater fuel cell and on the Symbiotic project, detecting cancer using fuel cells.

Anthony published a paper with Chris Zalitis in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C entitled 'General Models for the Electrochemical Hydrogen Oxidation and Hydrogen Evolution Reactions: Theoretical Derivation and Experimental Results under Near Mass-Transport Free Conditions'. 

Daniel and Anthony’s paper was published in the Journal of Power Sources. ‘A catalyst layer optimisation approach using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy for PEM fuel cells operated with pyrolysed transition metal-N-C catalysts’ is available here.

April 2016

Anthony published a paper with a former group member Biraj Kakati in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. The title was 'Recovery of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell exposed to sulphur dioxide'.

January 2016

Congratulations to Matt, who has been awarded a 2015 Fondazione Oronzio e Niccolò De Nora Fellowship in Applied Electrochemistry. He will investigate 'Gas Diffusion Electrodes with Tunable Transport Channels for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells'. 

Daniel and Anthony have published a paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A on 'The intriguing poison tolerance of non-precious metal oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts', the open-access full text is available here.

Anthony contributed to a review on 'Fundamentals and applications of self-assembled plasmonic nanoparticles at interfaces'. The article was published in Chemical Society Reviews and is available here.

October 2015

Anthony, Venkat and Kieran's paper "Facile synthesis of palladium phosphide electrocatalysts and their activity for the hydrogen oxidation, hydrogen evolutions, oxygen reduction and formic acid oxidation reactions" has been accepted to Catalysis Today. The article will be available online soon.

Matt, Chris and Anthony have just seen their latest article "Performance measurements and modelling of the ORR on fuel cell electrocatalysts – the modified double trap model", published in Electrochimica Acta. The article is available here.

September 2015

Welcome to our new Masters students Polly, Kai Ling, Pip, Dong and Yihong, arriving this term to start some research in the Kucernak lab.

July 2015

Congratulations to our MSc. students Alexandra Charleson, Yuchen Tang and Zhuo Zheng on their results.

June 2015

Good luck to Javier Rubio-Garcia and Daniel Malko who have been selected as finalists in the RSC's Emerging Technologies Competition 2015. Their project "Sweet Generator" seeks to produce power from industrial wastewater. 

As part of the ‘Advanced Methods in Electrochemistry’ seminar series hosted by the Electrochemistry Network here at Imperial, Anthony shared the stage with Dr Ifan Stephens to provide lectures on “Measuring Electrochemical Kinetics”