Breadth of CPE research activities showcased at the 2018 Christmas Symposium

The annual CPE Christmas symposium, this year on 14 December, showcased the breadth of research that takes place within the CPE community.

We had an impressive line up of speakers, that began with Prof Milo Shaffer who discussed a versatile method to produce and purify single walled carbon nanotubes (and other carbon species) in large quantities in his talk "Carbon nanopolyelectrolytes and what to do with them". Reductive dissolution avoids the damage caused by ultrasonication and aggressive oxidation while enabling derivatisation to add function to the material, eg for photocatalysts. Shaffer also outlined the methodology he has developed to introduce polymer chains onto the surface of graphene nanoplatelets via the grafting from and grafting to approaches (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.macromol.7b01047). One of the exciting uses for this polymer functionalised graphene is as a nucleant for the crystalliation of proteins.

Dr Firat Güder's talk "Zero-cost sensors made of fabrics" discussed some of the range of sensor applications that can utilise his simple technique of metallising fabrics. The methodology uses 10x less metal than commercial inks and - without optimisation - achieves 3.5-33?/sq conductivity. One example application he illustrated exploits the adsorption of water on paper. Güder demonstrated an ultra-low cost sensor that consists simply of paper and two carbon electrodes that is unusually sensitive to the ammonia produced during the spoilage of meat and that can be readily integrated into an NFC labelling tag.

Finally, Prof Jenny Nelson's talk "Where does the voltage go in organic solar cells" highlighted her work on an adapted model for explaining the non-radiative energy losses in OPV and OLED devices. So far, data from the model mirrors experimental observation and is uncovering the importance of the oscillator strength of the charge transfer state as opposed to the belief that most non-radiative energy transfer is to the higher vibrational levels of the ground state (journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031055).

After the symposium, CPE members let their hair down at the end of a tremendous year, and partied well into the night at Da Mario's restaurant.