PE-CDT/CPE hosts academics from Tokyo Tech to foster new collaborations

Delegates at the workshop

PE-CDT/CPE hosts academics from Tokyo Tech for workshop celebrating newly-established International Exchange Programme between our two institutions.

The PE-CDT/CPE has hosted academics from Tokyo Institute of Technology for a workshop to celebrate the newly-established International Exchange Programme between our two institutions.

The first day of the workshop on 4 March was a full day of talks and networking and showcased some of the recent advances that have been made in the field of organic and hybrid materials and interfaces. The programme was a great opportunity for researchers and students alike to learn more about the related research that is being carried out in Japan and was aimed at inspiring and initiating new collaborations.

After opening remarks by Ji-Seon Kim, director of the PE-CDT, Yuji Wada, Dean of the School of Materials and Chemical Technology introduced each of the speakers who had come over from Japan and explained the organisational structure at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Prof Wada then went on to give a scientific talk on his research related to the fabrication of nano-structured films as applied to solar cells by microwave irradiation. He was followed to the rostrum by Masahiro Miyauchi who gave a fascinating and engaging discussion of metal oxide based photocatalysts for energy and the environment and explained his idea for a mosquito trap. 

Martin Heeney chaired the second session of the day, where we heard talks from Takehiko Mori on transistors of charge transfer complexes, Andreas Kafizas, who discussed nanostructured metal oxide composite coatings for enhanced photocatalytic activity and Martin Vacha, who discussed his research on the nanoscale characterisation of functional polymers and hybrid organic materials by single molecule spectroscopy.

The drinks reception and networking event was preceded on the afternoon by talks from Shinji Ando, who gave a talk entitled "multi-colour fluorescent/phosphorescent polyimides exhibiting very large Stokes shifts and their application for solar spectral conversion", Sandrine Heutz "controlling and understanding triplets for photovoltaic and spintronic applications", Ikuyoshi Tomita "π-conjugated polymers possessing versatile elements-blocks by post-element transformation

technique". The penultimate talk of the day was given by CPE director James Durrant, who talked about charge carrier dynamics in organic and perovskite solar cells and Keiji Nagai wrapped things up with his talk "p-n junction based organophotocatalysts".

On the morning of 5 March, a delegation of our visitors had tours of the Agilent Measurements Suite, NMR facility, the newly-opened ROAR facility and iHUB, where we learned about the future collaborative and commercial future vision of Imperial. Back at South Kensington, we had tours of the shared CPE facilities in physics and materials.

We very much hope that the visit, workshop and meetings has left all parties with food for thought and will lead to new future collaborations between our two institutions.