News

The Fox group in collaboration with the Costantini group and IBM Zürich report the synthesis and characterisation of a range of Kekulé/non-Kekulé PAHs by STM/AFM with amazing resolution. Isolation of previously intangible and significantly less stable compounds with complex reaction mechanisms, in combination with the imaging used to help identify these compounds has highlighted an appealing synthetic-physical collaboration in characterising compounds.

The full article is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.201404877.

Lewandowski group in collaboration with Grzesiek (Basel, Switzerland) and Samoson (Tallinn, Estonia) groups has introduced a new solid-state NMR based approach that enables quantitative structural and dynamics studies of large protein complexes in a few nanomole quantities. This manuscript signifying a dawn of new era for high resolution NMR studies of large protein complexes has been featured in JACS Spotlights. Read the article in JACS.

The GibsonGroup's recent work on antifreeze-protein mimics has been highlighted on the front cover of RSC Biomaterials Science. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/bm/c4bm00153b#!divAbstract

The Hatton group report in Advanced Materials a new type of high transparency electrode for organic photovoltaics (OPVs), based on an ultra-thin bilayer of copper and amorphous tungsten suboxide, which derives its remarkable optical and electrical properties from diffusion of copper into the oxide layer at room temperature. As the window electrode in efficient OPVs this electrode performs as well as indium-tin oxide glass - the leading transparent electrode technology - by trapping light in a resonant optical cavity.

Full article available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.201404263

PhD student David Burnett from Richard Walton’s group was awarded best poster prize at the International Solvothermal and Hydrothermal Association conference held in Bordeaux October 26-29^th. His poster, "Hydrothermal Synthesis of Doped RuO₂ Materials", concerned new synthetic routes to conducting oxide materials.

The Chevening scholarships support excellent international students for postgraduate study at UK universities.Interested candidates should consult the webpages of our renowned taught masters programmes and contact the course directors as soon as possible.

http://www.chevening.org/

Deadline is 15th November.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/chemistry/gstudy/postgraduatedegrees/as_mit/

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/chemistry/gstudy/postgraduatedegrees/polymchem/

The Gibson's group Cryopreservation research has been highlighted in an article in Chemical and Engineering News. The group are developing a range of macromolecules which mimic the function of antifreeze proteins, found in Polar fish species, which can slow the rate of ice crystal growth. The group have shown these unique polymers to enhance the cryopreservation of donor tissue/cells, particulary blood. (Image is ice crystals which are inhibited by the polymers)Read the article here (Login required) and also the Chemistry World Feature here(login required).

Read Popular Science (USA) article on this here or BBC TV story here.

See publication list for full details.

Members of the Jones’ group collaborate with the Department of Physics to publish work on ZnO electron extracting interlayers for organic photovoltaic cells in Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Richard Walton’s group have this week published a paper in Angewandte Chemie describing some new mixed oxides of ruthenium and iridium that show favourable properties for electrochemical oxygen evolution from water. The work was part of an ongoing collaboration with industrial partner Johnson Matthey, and involved further collaboration with electrochemistry colleagues at the University of Southampton and the electron microscopy group in Warwick. An important aspect of the work was the use of in situ X-ray spectroscopy at Diamond Light Source: this has allowed new insights into the mode of operation of these important materials for energy applications, showing cooperative redox behaviour of two metals in mixed oxides.

“Water-Splitting Electrocatalysis in Acid Conditions Using Ruthenate-Iridate Pyrochlores” K. Sardar, E. Petrucco, C.I. Hiley, J.D.B Sharman, P.P. Wells, A.E. Russell, R.J. Kashtiban, J. Sloan and R.I. Walton, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 53 (2014) 10960–10964. October 6^th 2014.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201406668/abstract

(Open Access publication)

Congratulations to the winner of “The Magic of Chemistry" Art & Photography Competition, Samantha Benson (PhD student in Tosin group), for her entry "Is it a cumulus? Is it a stratus? No! It's Streptomyces coelicolor!"

Supramolecular guanosine-borate hydrogels have been made and characterised in a collaboration led by Jeff Davis (University of Maryland) with Andrew Marsh (Chemistry) and Steven Brown (Physics). The physiologically compatible gels, published in Journal of the American Chemical Society are featured in a Spotlight article. Lead author Gretchen Peters and Jeff Davis will visit Warwick again, 17-21 November to further explore applications of the materials.

A warm welcome to Professor Philip Chan, who joins the Department from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In partnership with the Monash-Warwick Alliance, Professor Chan will take up the role of Professor of Sustainable Chemistry. In this role, he will be pursuing the development of new green and sustainable catalytic strategies for complex molecule synthesis and their potential applications in the fields of natural products and functional materials synthesis, and drug discovery.