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Users of STFC facilities win prestigious awards

Interior view of ISIS's original experimental hall, R55, at STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
(Credit: STFC)

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has announced its 2016 prizes and awards, which recognise the achievements of individuals, teams and organisations in advancing the chemical sciences. Several prizes have been awarded to users of STFC facilities, including the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source (ISIS) and the Diamond Light Source (Diamond). These latest awards demonstrate that STFC continues to be at the forefront of world-leading chemical sciences research.

Computational science

Professor Angelos Michaelides of University College London has been awarded the Corday-Morgan Prize for ‘the development of computational methods and applications that have significantly advanced understanding of several important chemical systems’. His work aims to model, describe and predict the properties of materials.

He works closely with Professor Felix Fernandez-Alonso, Molecular Spectroscopy Group Leader at ISIS. They jointly supervised PhD student Gabriella Graziano, whose thesis provided an improved description of soft-layered materials, such as graphite and boron nitride. These materials are characterised by being extremely strong in one plane but are ‘soft’ – that is weakly bound – in another: layers slide over one another with ease. Such materials are important in catalytic and environmental systems.

The collaboration combines Professor Michaelides’ expertise in computational modelling with the ISIS group’s extensive experience of working with neutron beams. Professor Fernandez-Alonso notes that “the collaboration is part of a wider strategy of working with top-notch theoretical scientists.”

Electronic components

Professor Dermot O’Hare of Oxford University has been awarded the Tilden Prize for his ‘creative work on synthesis, reactivity and advanced characterisation of molecular inorganic compounds and materials spanning organometallic chemistry to framework and layered materials’.

He has used ISIS facilities to conduct hydrothermal synthesis experiments, where crystals form in water at elevated temperatures and pressures. Resulting materials, for example barium titanate, are used in electronic devices due to their special properties, such as electrical resistances that vary with temperature.

“The advantages of using neutron beams, as opposed to X-rays, for these studies are twofold” notes Dr Ron Smith – Professor O’Hare’s long-term collaborator. “First, neutrons are easily able to penetrate the reaction vessel to probe the bulk mixture inside. Secondly, neutrons are scattered by atomic nuclei and may therefore have advantages when investigating structures containing light atoms. So using ISIS enables researchers to look at reactions in real-time, observe crystal structures in the reaction mix and understand the mechanisms of chemical processes. It is possible to genuinely view reactions without interrupting the process to make measurements.”

Long-life batteries

Professor Peter Bruce of Oxford University has been awarded the Liversidge Award for his contributions to the ‘chemistry of energy conversion and storage, particularly pioneering the lithium-air battery, and the discovery of ionic conductivity in crystalline polymers’.

Professor Bruce regularly uses facilities at ISIS to conduct extensive studies of the structure of materials used in battery electrodes. By placing lithium batteries in a neutron beam, he is able to study what happens to the charge-carrying lithium ions in the crystal structures during many charging/discharging cycles. As lithium is a light element, neutron scattering is more effective than using X-rays.

His recent work focuses on the synthesis of nanomaterials for lithium-ion batteries, the challenges of the lithium-air battery – a potentially smaller, longer-lasting, more powerful battery – and the influence of order on the ionic conductivity of polymer electrolytes.

Industrial applications

Professor Avelino Corma of the Instituto de Tecnología Química UPV-CSIC in Spain has been awarded the Spiers Memorial Awardfor the ‘introduction of new concepts for the synthesis of microporous and mesoporous inorganic materials and their application in heterogeneous catalysis which have resulted in an extensive range of industrial applications’. He has also used ISIS facilities for his research.

Tailored plastics

Professor Ian Hamley of the University of Reading has been awarded the Peter Day Award for ‘advances in understanding the self-assembly and nanostructures of block copolymers, and the development of important amyloid-related biomaterials’. Block copolymers – two or more different polymer chains linked together ¬– may hold the key to cheaper, more-tailored plastics.

In 2004, Professor Hamley was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the Synchrotron Radiation Source, Daresbury Laboratory to undertake synchrotron X-ray scattering studies of polymeric materials. In 2005, he moved to the University of Reading to take up the Diamond Professorship in conjunction with Diamond Light Source.

The RSC prizes and awards, alongside the recent announcement that ISIS’s senior scientist and Professor of Chemistry Bill David has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society, illustrate that STFC facilities are the research tools of choice for some of the world’s leading chemical scientists and, indeed, that STFC remains at the forefront of chemical sciences research.Leaders in chemical sciences research

Congratulations to our winning collaborators!