Great to have new MSc (Research) student Merve join the group from Turkey! Merve is just settling in to Bristol, and will be starting her lab work very soon, working on conjugated microporous polymers for CO2 capture and conversion!
Welcome Merve!
Great to have the first new graduate students of the year joining the FRG! Connie (left) and Julia (middle) are both on the Cabot Institute’s Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges degree programme, and about to start their projects in our laboratories!
Here they are, COVID safe, and socially distanced, on their first day in the lab with Veronica (right). Welcome! Trust that you will have a inspiring and productive year, despite things being done very differently than before!
Continuing the Faul Research Group’s long-standing collaboration with Yaozu and Wei (and Yaozu’s group at Donghua University in Shanghai), our latest paper just appeared in Chemistry of Materials! And of course great to have Arne Thomas (TU Berlin) involved in the study as well!
The study, entitled “Conjugated Microporous Polymer Network Grafted Carbon Nanotube Fibers with Tunable Redox Activity for Efficient Flexible Wearable Energy Storage” explores novel fiber-shaped supercapacitors (FSCs) as promising flexible energy storage devices.
Congrats to all involved – especially Wei as first author of this very nice study!
It was Charl’s first day back in his office since March! Although Faul group members have been back in the labs since early June (with labs currently at 50% occupancy), Charl has been working from home! His office has also been used by the group as an additional safe working space.
Was great to be back in the office today, for the whole day! And to be able to enjoy the glorious sunshine view from the 6th floor!
Nan (joint PhD student with close collaborator Natalie Fey) and Basi are taking part in the RSC’s Porous Materials Interest Group’s Twitter Poster Competition! Fantastic effort from both! Well done!
Find them on Twitter, or Follow @faulresearch on Twitter to stay up to date with the latest news.
It is with great excitement that the first team (of three) started to do lab work again today! It was a long break, but we are all very excited to go back – and grateful for the fantastic job done by the University of Bristol’s Estate Services, and Prof Paul Pringle and his safety team in the School of Chemistry, to ensure a safe return for all!
The lab was cleaned and decluttered on Friday and yesterday – it has not been this neat, tidy and clean since we moved in! A big thank you to everyone who contributed to make this new way of working (with socially distanced working, seating arrangements and one-way system, amongst many new procedures!) possible.
We are now engaging in the process of planning a slow and safe phased return to our laboratories! A number of discussions about detailed practical considerations have already taken place – Zoom is being used very heavily!
More from us soon … hopefully from the lab!
Spring has certainly arrived in Bristol! Great to have an opportunity to go for a walk on Bristol’s famous “Downs” early this morning! What a privilege to live in such a beautiful place!
Stay safe!
We enjoyed an exciting day of science earlier this week when all of our Final Year MSci Undergraduate students presented the results from their efforts of the past 5 months!
It was a great opportunity to learn about their research, but also to celebrate their success – EJ was one of the prize winners! Well done to all – fantastic job!
And, in true Faul Research Group style, we ended the day of science with a group meal!!
A paper on switchable azobenzene-based liquid crystals by Luke, who visited in July 2019, and supervised by collaborator Rico Tabor (and co-supervised by Charl!), just appeared online in the RSC’s PCCP.
The study, entitled “Structural relationships for the design of responsive azobenzene-based lyotropic liquid crystals” explored light-responsive binary (azobenzene + solvent) lyotropic liquid crystals (LCs), and investigated their phase behaviour by structural modification of simple azobenzene molecules. A range of scattering and microscopy techniques were employed to explore the influence of structure and light-switchable nature on phase behaviour in these very interesting systems. Well done to Luke and all collaborators!
