Formation, Organisation & Response of Materials
Earlier this week had a hugely enjoyable Christmas lunch at the Canal House, complete with crackers, secret Santa gifts and a speech given to the tune of Shakin’ Stevens’ Merry Christmas Everyone. It was great to have Harry and Aaron back from Harwell and Berlin, respectively, to join us as we celebrated the end of term, MSci and PhD report submissions and all the highs and lows 2022.
Merry Christmas everyone… and bring on 2023!
Big thanks to Sophie and Hannah for organising!
This year we are lucky enough to be joined by Hannah Blakiston and Sophie Ray to do their MSci research projects with the group.
Sophie will be working on isolation and characterisation of intermediate clusters in MOF synthesis, while Hannah will be investigating phase behaviour and compositional trends in hybrid perovskites.
Today after a gourmet calzone group lunch at the Plough, Harborne, we bid farewell to our MSci project students this year, Matt Liddle and Sam Gale.
Matt investigated the phase behaviour of the BIRM-1 family of carboxyphosphonate MOFs, mapping out which phases formed under different synthetic conditions. He discovered at least one new material and showed that, like BIRM-1, it underwent structural collapse and then recrystallisation upon drying and resolvation. Matt goes on to PhD research in the group of Prof Ross Forgan at the University of Glasgow.
Sam investigated structural and compositional variations in the MDABCO-based halide perovskites. He found several new structures––some wonderfully unintended!––that pushed the limits of phase behaviour, broke the rules (that we wrote!) and showed that paraelectric–ferroelectric phase transitions are highly dependent on sample history. We’re currently writing up his work so watch this space for a paper in the near future… Sam is taking a year out and will be looking for PhD opportunities for 2023.
Farewell and good luck for your final exams, Matt and Sam!
We bid a fond farewell to Joe Barker, who leaves UoB for an exciting Postdoc Research position in the group of Prof Fiona Meldrum at the University of Leeds.
Joe joined the group this year as he was finishing off his PhD research, to help with our MSci projects jointly supervised by Prof Paul Anderson. It was great having you at our group meetings and learning from all your insights into carboxyphosphonate MOFs.
We’ll miss you but we’re looking forward to watching all the developments in your career and research in future!
Hamish, Joe A, Harry and Aaron attended the Spring Meeting of the British Crystallographic Association, at Leeds University 11–14 April 2022. It was great to be back for our first conference in person to catch up with the community and some of the latest science!
Joe and Aaron gave posters on their PhD research, whilst Harry gave a (virtual) talk in the PCG session on Structure-Property Relationships in Energy Storage, about his work on phase transitions in the MDABCO halide perovskites.
Hamish chaired the joint CCG/PCG session on Advances in Complementary Techniques and In Situ Crystallography, and was also awarded the CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists. As part of the prize, he gave a talk at the meeting, and received a unique memento from the CCDC of a model of one of the crystal structures from his PhD!
Yeung Research Group at UoB 