News

The Gibson Group has been highlighted in a recent edition of Chemistry World - The Royal Society of Chemistry's Monthly Magazine. As part of a special article on how life survives in extreme enviroments, Dr Gibson was interviewed to discuss his team's work on polymeric mimics of antifreeze (glyco)proteins. These proteins enable fish to survive in polar oceans and synthetic mimics hold great promise in biotechnology.

Read the article here

Go to the Gibson Group's Webpages here

Follow us on twitter @LabGibson

Collaboration between the Costantini and Wills groups investigates the dissociation of a newly synthesised, novel chiral ester on metallic substrates. The products of dissociation are directly imaged by scanning tunnelling microscopy allowing for the delineation of the cleavage mechanism as seen in ChemComm.

Józef Lewandowski publishes in the Accounts of Chemical Research a review on advances in solid-state NMR relaxation methodology for probing site-specific protein dynamics. Read the article here.

The Gibson group have undertaken a detailed study into the ability of synthetic polymers to inhibit the growth of ice crystals - this is a fundmental process of incredible importance in biology (survival of extremophiles), medicine (cryoprotectection of cells/organs) and industry (preventing ice-induced damage). The Gibson group are pioneering the use of polymers as alternative to antifreeze proteins - Nature's cryoprotectants, using a combination of chemical, analytical, biological and computational methods

Read their latest paper here, in collaboration with R. Notman (CSC): http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bm400217j

Researchers in the Warwick Electrochemistry and Interfaces group have performed what's called in the American baseball jargon a 'home run' after publishing four studies in the Journal of American Chemical Society (JACS) in less than four months. The four papers demonstrate the versatility of the scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) technique developed in this group which can be applied to various aspects of research; from probing facets and grain boundaries of pseudo-single-crystal polycrystalline electrodes to nanoscale patterning, and landing single-nanoparticles on surfaces to study catalysis.

For further details click the paper titles below:

• Pseudo-Single-Crystal Electrochemistry on Polycrystalline Electrodes: Visualizing Activity at Grains and Grain Boundaries on Platinum for the Fe2+/Fe3+ Redox Reaction
• Nanoscale Electrochemical Patterning Reveals the Active Sites for Catechol Oxidation at Graphite Surfaces
• A New View of Electrochemistry at Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite
• Landing and Catalytic Characterization of Individual Nanoparticles on Electrode Surfaces

Dr Gareth Roberts, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department has been appointed as a Ramsay Memorial Fellow to be held in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol. These fellowships are awarded to advanced students of chemical research who have shown outstanding merit. His proposed research will entail studying the ultrafast photoprotection mechanisms at work in DNA base-pairs. Congratulations Gareth!

TEDxWarwick 2013

Stefan Bon is an associate professor in Chemistry at Warwick, famously making the headlines in 2012 for halving the fat content of chocolate by replacing it with fruit juice. He studied Chemical Engineering at the Technical University of Eindhoven and has a background in developing (living) radical polymerizations. Since 2005 Bon has become an international player in the area of polymer colloids, and continues to innovate in the area.

He is the founder of the BonLab, where the study of chemistry and physics of the assembly of molecular and/or colloidal entities into complex structures is conducted. This technology is applicable in everything from sensors and devices, coatings and adhesives, to food, personal care, agricultural and biological systems.

To watch the TEDx talk, click here.

Find out more about the BonLab at www.bonlab.info.

Members of the Warwick Electrochemistry Group worked with children who attend The Grange Extended Learning Centre over a six week period. The Grange ELC is a pupil referral unit for students who have been, or are at risk of being excluded from their mainstream school. This project was coordinated by the Chemistry departments very own outreach officer Nick Barker and has been reported by local media.

The project involved the collection of soil samples from sites once occupied by car factories around the city of Coventry and then analyse these samples for heavy metal contamination. Over the first three weeks, two children worked in the laboratories at Warwick to prepare electrodes while the rest of the group, usually four children, went to old car manufacturing site like Jaguar (Brown’s Lane) and Rover (Cromwell Lane) to collect soil samples.

Here is what Manni Sahota, acting Headteacher of The Grange ELC, had to say about this outreach project:

‘I feel the project run by Prof Pat Unwin and his staff was a huge success. It raised the pupils’ self-esteem and their aspirations. They learned how to use scientific equipment and saw first-hand what a University looks like. One of the pupils even talked about becoming a scientist.'

'All the work we have ever done with Warwick University over the past few years would not be possible without Nick Barker, Teacher Fellow, who knows exactly where our pupils come from and the opportunities they would never otherwise have.’

Rachel has been awarded the 2013 Herman F. Mark Young Scholar award by the American Chemical Society. This award is presented biennially to recognize excellence in basic or applied research and leadership in polymer science by scientist aged thirty five or younger. She will be presented with this award at a special symposium at the Fall ACS conference.

http://www.polyacs.org/10.html#markscholars

Dr Matt Gibson has been awarded the RSC Macrogroup Young Researchers Medal for 2012. He will receive his medal at Conference in Durham in July this year, where he will also be giving a lecture. This medal is awarded to a UK-based scientist, normally under the age of 36 on 31 December of the preceding year, whose contributions to polymer science show outstanding promise for the future. This is excellent news for Matt and the Department of Chemistry. Congratulations to Matt!

http://www.rsc.org/Membership/Networking/InterestGroups/MacroUK/Awards/YoungResearchersMedal.asp

A lithography-free method for the fabrication of optically-thin plasmon-active metal window electrodes with a dense array of nano-sized apertures on glass and plastic substrates is reported. These remarkably robust, low sheet resistance electrodes simultaneously concentrate light and extract charge carriers in solution processed and vacuum deposited organic photovoltaics and outperform indium-tin oxide electrodes on flexible substrates

Plasmon-active nano-aperture window electrodes for organic photovoltaics

H. M. Stec, R. A. Hatton*, Advanced Energy Materials (2012) 3, 193-199.