The CPE Annual Symposium and Researchers' Symposium was held on Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 June and featured 10 invited talks from external speakers.

CPE Postdocs and Students Showcase their Work

The CPE Researchers' Symposium on Monday 26th June showcased the work of fellows, postdocs and students in the Centre for Plastic Electronics. Chaired by Dr Artem Bakulin (Chemistry Department) and Dr Andrew Telford (Physics Department), the symposium featured invited talks by Dr Andrew Musser (University of Sheffield), Dr Moritz Riede (Oxford University) and Dr Brian O'Regan (Sunlight Scientific). Six PhD students and four postdocs/fellows also contributed talks on a range of topics related to Plastic Electronics, from photophysical and structural properties of polymers to stability studies and adhesion lithography.

CPE Annual Symposium

Prof Michael Grätzel (EPFL) gave his RSC Centenary Prize lecture and the the first keynote presentation to a packed lecture theatre: "Flexible Dye Sensitized and Perovskite Solar Cells". Prof Seth Marder (Georgia Tech) also gave a keynote presentation. Five other high profile external speakers presented invited talks, while the CPE was represented by Dr Sandrine Heutz (Materials Department) and Dr Artem Bakulin.

The poster sessions on both days were buzzing with discussions.  The CPE's industrial Affiliates and external advisory board were also invited.  This was an excellent opportunity CPE students and postdocs to network with external academic and industrial researchers, as well as other members of the CPE. 

Talk and Poster Prizes

Congratulations to all the winners of the prizes!  Here they give thier take on the day...

Luis Lanzetta Lopez - 1st Talk Prize

Even though this was the first CPE Annual Symposium, the quality of the meeting was outstanding. Both Imperial College members and other local researchers had the chance to attend fantastic talks given by world class experts that covered a great variety of topics. Given my background, I particularly enjoyed the presentations delivered by Dr. Davide Moia, Dr. Brian O'Regan and Prof. Laura Herz.

I feel very grateful to the CPE and sponsors for this talk prize. This symposium represented an excellent platform to present our recently published work, and I and my coworkers at Haque group are very glad for this recognition!

Dr Davide Moia - Runner-Up Talk Prize

Always very interesting to hear from other members of the CPE what new research they are up to, especially from those based at different universities in the UK. Also, having as keynote speakers the co-inventors of the dye solar cell made the event special for me, having worked on this technology for my PhD. Well done to Steph, Lisa and Linnea for an impeccable organisation and thanks to Joule, Royal Society of Chemistry, STREM, and DZP Technologies for sponsoring the talk prize that I was awarded.

Nilushi Wijeyasinghe - 1st Poster Prize

I am really pleased to have won this poster prize for the research I presented on developing a new hole-transport layer for highly efficient organic and organometal halide perovskite solar cells. My work was supervised by Professor Thomas Anthopoulos (Physics), while two other PhD students from the CPE, Flurin Eisner (Physics) and Tian Du (Materials), also contributed important experimental results to my poster.

The CPE Annual Symposium was a great event with several outstanding talks and posters. I particularly enjoyed the RSC Centenary Prize lecture by Professor Michael Grätzel (EPFL), and the talk by Dr Hugo Bronstein (UCL) on triplet excited states in conjugated polymers. Two posters that really caught my attention were Julianna Panidi’s research on high mobility organic semiconductor systems for transistor applications, and Flurin Eisner’s work on electron transport layers based on bilayer oxide films. This event also gave members of the CPE a good opportunity to identify potential collaborators from other research groups, which I personally found very helpful!

Yifan Dong - Runner-Up Poster Prize

I’m really honoured to receive a poster prize at the CPE Symposium. I’ve had some very insightful discussions with my colleagues from CPE as well as the external speakers.  The two-day event gave me the chance to listen to the talks from a multidisciplinary background ranging from device synthesis to spectroscopy. I particularly enjoyed the talk given by Dr. Hugo Bronstein from UCL, looking in depth at the triplet excited states which represent a significant loss pathway in both OLED and OPV.

All in all, I think the CPE Symposium has been a great opportunity to both display my own work as well as learn about other group’s research. I look forward to attending future events!

Sponsorship

Many thanks to the Symposium sponsors!

• Joule
• STREM
• DZP Technologies
• Royal Society of Chemistry