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About Faul Research Group - Functional Polymers

This is the official website for the Faul Research Group, based in the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charl-fj-faul-付强/

Carrot science at the local Science Cafe!

Charl spoke at the local Bristol and Bath Science Cafe last night (30th of July). It was a fun evening, explaining self-assembly, types of interactions, energies, shape and function of nanostructured materials at the hand of the simple example of bunches of carrots! The venue was packed, and Charl was questioned for a whole hour after his presentation!

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Thanks to Carl (who was in the audience with Angel) for the photos!

Charl promoted to Reader in Materials Chemistry

The FRG went to the Grain Barge (on the harbourside, Hotwells, looking out over the SS Great Britian) after the usual Monday afternoon group meeting to celebrate the recent anouncement that Charl has been promoted to the position of “Reader in Materials Chemistry”. It was a fantastic sunny afternoon in a great setting – the perfect place to celebrate!

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Prof Huaping Xu from Tsinghua visiting the FRG!

Huaping Xu, and a PhD student Kai Liu, from the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijiing, visited Bristol from Saturday – Tuesday.  After an interesting day of scientific discussions, Huaping gave an excellent talk entitled: “Selenium-containing Polymers: from Molecular Design to Controlled Self-assembly and Disassembly.” We then all rewarded ourselves by going to the Robin Hood on St. Michael’s Hill!

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See the link on the University of Bristol’s Weibo pages!

Tetra(aniline) diblock paper published!

The latest paper from the FRG, in collaboration with the group of Zhixiang Wei at the CAS National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, just appeared online in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

A tetra(aniline)-alkyl diblock compound was designed, synthesized and fully characterized. By employing suitable conditions, doped, electroactive microstructures could be prepared. The microstructures were characterized in detail and their anisotropic conductivity measured for the first time.

Congratulations to Shao (now in Sweden), Saravanan and other authors!  This has now also appeared on the University of Bristol’s Weibo pages in China!

Perylene paper published!

A new study on chiral self-assembled sugar-substituted perylenes with Zhixiang Wei’s group was accepted and published online in Advanced Functional Materials today!

It was shown that supramolecular structures and helicity of this new perylene derivative can be tuned by kinetic and thermodynamic factors. Demonstration devices for hydrazine sensing based on single nanoribbons exhibit better performance than nanofiber bundles and other achiral nanostructure devices. This provides a pathway to tuning the structures and helicity as well as the possibility to construct high-performance nanodevices.

Natalie Stingeling in Bristol!

Natalie Stingelin, from the Department of Materials and Centre for Plastic Electronics, visited the FRG labs and the BCFN yesterday.  She gave an excellent talk on manipulating phase transformations and order of organic semi-conductors in the solid state. It was a pleasure to have her here, and we look forward to continued contact in the future!

Interested in joining the Faul Research Group?

Money

As we are entering into the summer grant writing season, I thought it good to highlight an upcoming opportunity to join the FRG.  These might not be suitable in all cases to all candidates, so please read carefully:

If you have >10 publications and patents, and are not based in the UK, it might be possible to apply for a prestigious EU Marie Curie Fellowship. There are a number of schemes, including International Incoming Fellowships (for researchers based outside the EU) and Intra-European Fellowships (if you have spent at least the last 18 months within the EU, irrespective of your nationality).  Please only contact me if are over the threshold of 10 publications. Internal deadline for submissions of applications the 9th of August 2012, so please contact me as soon as possible if you think you are eligible.

-charl-