Oxford Research Fellow Recognised by Forbes


Oxford University Senior Research Fellow, Robert House, who is working on the next generation of rechargeable battery materials at Diamond Light Source, has been selected as one of Forbes Magazine’s prestigious 30 people to watch under 30 in Europe Science and Healthcare. Selected from thousands, shortlisted candidates are then evaluated by Forbes and a panel of independent, expert judges on a variety of factors, including funding, revenue, social impact, scale, inventiveness and potential.


Lead on a project focused on application-inspired research and development (R&D) in the science of battery materials, in 2021 Robert secured £500k in fellowship funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering and £50k from the University of Oxford to launch a research program to develop innovative, sustainable Na-ion battery materials. The research team aims to develop sodium ion batteries as a cheaper and easier to source alternative to resource- constrained elements such as lithium and cobalt.


Colleagues encouraged Robert to put his name forward for consideration and he was quickly shortlisted and invited to provide further information about his research, ambitions, awards, honours, publications and patents. Commenting on his selection and ambitions; “I’m thrilled to be listed among some of Europe’s top young scientists and innovators under 30. To tackle the climate crisis, we must move away from burning petrol and diesel in our vehicles as a matter of urgency. Electric vehicles (EVs) are the next best alternative, but they currently rely on Li-ion battery technology which is expensive and can make up to half of the cost of buying the car. To make more affordable EVs, and to reduce our dependence on critical elements, we have to look beyond Li-ion to


other rechargeable batteries. The future of batteries is coming: Na-ion and beyond.”


The I21 RIXS beamline is a dedicated Resonant Inelastic soft X-ray Scattering (RIXS) beamline that provides a highly monochromatised, focused and tunable X-ray beam onto materials, used to probe changes to the electronic structure of oxygen when it takes part in charge storage reactions. “Over the last few years, together with the beamline team at I21, Prof Sir Peter Bruce and his team and Faraday Institution researchers on the CATMAT project, we have used RIXS to develop a detailed understanding of the mechanism by which oxygen is able to store energy reversibly in the cathode. We have been able to identify two unique mechanisms which if used in the right way could deliver improvements in the energy density of cathode materials,” explained Robert.


He added that while sodium-ion batteries are an attractive option as they can be made cheaply and entirely from earth-abundant elements, they still lag behind Li-on performance. A major limitation for sodium is the cathode material as most do not store as much energy as their lithium counterparts. Robert’s group are discovering brand new cathode materials for Na-ion cells made from earth- abundant precursors such as salt and rust. By incorporating these minerals together using novel synthesis approaches, they are targeting new compounds which should exhibit comparable performance to state-of-the-art Li-ion cathodes such as the lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery.


Regular battery cathodes work by using the transition metal ions in the structure to store and release electrons as the Li or Na ions


Robert House (3rd from left) and research team at I21 beamline (Credit: Diamond Light Source)


are shuttled in and out. The new Na-ion materials the group is investigating are able to store additional electrons using the oxygen ions in the material - this could help to overcome the energy density limitations sodium cathodes face.


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/LeNo 60636pr@reply-direct.com


RMS Flow Cytometry Course Confocal Raman Imaging Symposium 2023 2023 - September York


The 19th Confocal Raman Imaging Symposium, announced by Oxford Instruments/WITec, will take place September 25 - 27, 2023 in Ulm, Germany. This multidisciplinary, international conference for chemical characterisation and imaging brings together the Raman microscopy and spectroscopy community to share leading- edge developments in methodology and technology. Researchers from all areas of application are cordially invited to participate and present their results.


This Flow Cytometry Course is aimed at both clinical applications and applications in cell biology, with the common fundamentals covered on Day 1 and 2. The course then splits into clinical applications and applications in cell biology streams, from practical demonstrations to lectures highlighting not just the applications, but best practise as well.


The course is constructed as a set of three modules. You can elect to attend the course from between two to fi ve days, depending on the modules selected.


The modules consist of lectures interspersed with sessions in the laboratory. It is anticipated that instruments from two manufacturers will be available for practical work.


This course is open to all and is suitable for those who are relatively new to fl ow cytometry and who wish to expand their experience with applications and specifi c analysis.


A trade exhibition will be held at this event on Wednesday 6th September, if you are interested in exhibiting visit the RMS website on the link below.


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/zBl7 60632pr@reply-direct.com


RMS: All things Cryo October 9-13 Nottingham


This course consists of two and half days, broken into morning and afternoon virtual lecture sessions, covering the theory of the techniques. Days 4 and 5 (Thursday and Friday) will be fi lled with practical demonstrations/Q&A sessions to explore the practical points of the techniques/approaches with the delegates in person, should they wish to come to Nottingham. This course is designed to be suitable for anyone that wants to explore cryogenic microscopy methods to support their research and this could apply to life sciences, material sciences and beyond.


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/pNpo 60633pr@reply-direct.com


European Microscopy Society (EMS) Awards


The EMS ‘Outstanding Paper Awards’


have been announced for categories in Instrumentation and Technique Development, Materials Sciences and Life Sciences, by the Executive Board of the European Microscopy Society (EMS).


In recognition of the best original work in the fi eld of microscopy, the submitted papers are judged on scientifi c merit, technical and general quality and expected impact.


For papers published in 2022, there were 17 nominations in total, and the winners in each category were as follows:


Instrumentation and Technique Development


Nadezda Varkentina*, Yves Auad*, Steffi Y. Woo, Alberto Zobelli, Laura Bocher, Jean-Denis Blazit, Xiaoyan Li, Marcel Tencé, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Odile Stéphan, Mathieu Kociak, Luiz H. G. Tizei, Cathodoluminescence excitation spectroscopy: Nanoscale imaging of excitation pathways: Science Advances 8 (*equal contribution).


Life Sciences


Elena Macías-Sánchez, Nadezda V. Tarakina, Danail Ivanov, Stéphane Blouin, Andrea M. Berzlanovich, and Peter Fratzl, Spherulitic Crystal Growth Drives Mineral Deposition Patterns in Collagen-Based Materials: Advanced Functional Materials, 2022, 2200504:


Material Sciences


Mingjian Wu, Christina Harreiß, Colin Ophus, Manuel Johnson, Rainer H. Fink and Erdmann Spiecker, Seeing structural evolution of organic molecular nano-crystallites using 4D scanning confocal electron diffraction (4D-SCED): Nature Communications 13, 2911, 2022.


The fi rst authors of these papers will receive a mention of their award and will present their work at the 20th International Microscopy Congress to be held on 9 to15 September, 2023 / BEXCO, Busan, Korea. Further details can be found on the RMS website.


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/ReE5 60644pr@reply-direct.com


Speakers from academia and industry will present their work in fi elds ranging from pharmaceutical research to microparticles, cultural heritage to nutritional science, 2D materials to astromaterials and more. The poster session will provide attendees with the opportunity to share their own work alongside that of their peers in a relaxed forum conducive to discussion. Raman experts and newcomers alike will benefi t from the variety and depth of the presentations.


Equipment demonstrations will be held at WITec headquarters on the third day of the conference featuring the latest hardware and software. This session will also allow attendees to engage directly with WITec team members to discuss their work.


The organisers very much look forward to seeing the Raman community gathered once again in Ulm at this annual event for spectroscopic chemical imaging.


More information online: ilmt.co/PL/beAB 60637pr@reply-direct.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56