Congratulations to Enrico Daviddi- Runner up prize in Warwick Chemistry Department 2020 symposium's postgraduate students publication competition for “Nanoscale Visualization and Multiscale Electrochemical Analysis of Conductive Polymer Electrodes” on 27th of May 2020.

One of the latest group publications " Redox-Dependent Spatially Resolved Electrochemistry at Graphene and Graphite Step Edges" published in ACS Nano earlier this month has been highlighted as one of the top 10 articles in this month's "In Nano" review. Congratulations to all involved!

The work by the team studies the basal surfaces and step edges of graphene and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) using Ru(NH₃)₆ ^3+/2+, a redox probe whose standard potential lies near the intrinsic Fermi level of graphene and graphite. Using scanning electrochemical cell microscopy and other complementary microscopy techniques, including atomic force microscopy and micro-Raman, the group found a strong dependence of the electron transfer kinetics on the number of graphene layers, with rates increasing with layer number. In graphene and HOPG that were analysed at similar time points after cleavage, there were distinct differences in the electrochemical activity between basal planes and step edges. These differences were accentuated over time in HOPG. The authors suggest that these findings could lead to better understanding of both materials, which could eventually advance their use in a variety of applications.

The recent paper "Surface Charge Mapping with a Nanopipette" published in JACS by the group has been featured in the latest C & EN (Chemical and Engineering) News, "Expanding The Capabilities of Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy". The paper explores the power of a nanopipette when combined with SICM, showing that simultaneously both surface charge mapping and topographical data can be conducted. This has vast implications in a variety of different research areas including cell biology and material characterisation where understanding the surface charge is of key importance.

Many congratulations to Kim McKelvey who has been awarded with the Faculty of Science Doctoral Thesis Award for his work on " New Approaches and Application in Electrochemical Scanning Probe Microscopy".

The initiative, which was commissioned by the Faculty of Science, offered awards of up to £500 for the best PhD theses from each of the Faculty of Science PhD-awarding departments and centres.

Supervisors were invited to nominate eligible students. Each department onvened a panel of internal and external academics to review the nominations and choose the successful candidate.

We also want to take this opportunity to wish Kim all the best in his next academic venture as a postdoctoral fellow in Indiana, USA at the University of Notre Dame in the Timp Nano-Bio Group.

The top 10 most popular spectroscopy and material science papers published in Analytical Chemistry throughout the last year have been listed in the recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News Magazine.

Among the top 10 was work conducted by members at WEIG, Binoy Nadappuram, Kim McKelvey, Rehab al Botros, Alex Colburn and Pat Unwin on the "Fabrication and Characterization of Dual Function Nanoscale pH-Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy (SICM) Probes for High Resolution pH Mapping".

The work features the quantitative power of dual function SICM probes to monitor pH as well as topographical changes during the dissolution of a calcite crystal. Congratulations to all those involved!