CPE Researchers Awarded Large Korean Government Grant

Ji-Seon Kim, James Durrant, Martin Heeney and Martyn McLachlan, together with GIST colleagues, have been awarded a prestigious Korean GRL grant.

Ji-Seon, James, Martin and Martyn, together with colleagues in GIST, have recently been awarded a Global Research Laboratory (GRL) grant (total $2.5M for 6 years, $1M to Imperial) to develop ‘flexible and printed hybrid photovoltaic modules with ultrahigh efficiency, long-term stability and large-area reproducibility’. The GRL is one of the two largest grants in Korea to support international collaboration, funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (MSIP) / National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). There has been no GRL grant awarded in the UK in recent years. This funding will be aligned with the PE-CDT to support studentships and training activities in coming years.

GIST-Imperial International R&D Centre on Plastic Electronics

Being awarded the GRL grant is a big achievement and a significant step forward for the Centre for Plastic Electronics (CPE) in terms of its long-term collaborative strategy with Korea. In particular, this grant will provide substantial support for the GIST-ICL International Collaboration R&D Centre for Plastic Electronics, which was established upon strong support from College. Since Dec 2014, the R&D Centre has brought GIST and Imperial plastic electronics together. It has successfully secured initial funding from GIST strategic funds and the EPSRC Supersolar programme, allowing the CPE to host three senior GIST researchers at Imperial. We are also currently planning student exchange programmes.

UK-Korea Links

In March this year, Ji-Seon was invited to attend the 2017 UK-Korea Government Joint Committee Meeting on Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation, led by the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Korean MSIP. In this meeting, the UK-Korea collaboration on Plastic Electronics led by Imperial was introduced as one of the success stories of UK-Korea collaboration. 

The CPE-GIST collaborations are part of wider a UK-Korea Plastic Electronics consortium, initiated and developed by Ji-Seon. These Imperial-Korea interactions were initially sponsored by a Global Partnerships Fund (BEIS), a Global Engagement Fund (EPSRC), and a Focal Point programme (NRF, MSIP). We look forward to seeing the CPE-GIST collaboration go from strength to strength!

Partnership with GIST

‘Our partnership with GIST is of key strategic importance to the CPE’, says James, ‘particularly because of the global importance of Korea in the development of plastic electronic technologies. The GRL project will focus primarily on combined perovskite / organic solar cells, so aligning with a broad range of research ongoing in the CPE’.