Charl finished his “Introduction to Liquid Crystals and Soft Matter” course for undergraduates at the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University earlier this week.
As part of the course, the students spent a morning in the laboratories, making their own liquid crystals, and observing the fascinating textures using polarised light microscopy!
James’ paper in Small is now available as an Open Access document, and free to download. Enjoy!
Charl attended the UoB’s graduation ceremony in Beijing on Saturday … and had the chance to celebrate with 4 BCFN MSc students who also received their degrees! Congratulations!
Charl was privileged to meet with Prof Chunli Bai, the President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and pioneer of SPM techniques in China. Prof Bai was awarded an honorary degree by Bristol on Saturday.
Charl is currently in Beijing in his role as adjunct professor at Tsinghua University, teaching an introductory course on liquid crystals and soft matter. This visit is also an opportunity to discuss research and collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Chemistry.
Charl is also attending the University of Bristol’s China graduation ceremony (and alumni meetings) this weekend, where he is representing the Faculty of Science. Busy weekend ahead!
Updates and photos to follow soon!
New group member, Kazuyoshi Watanabe, was welcomed to the group in true British style – with a trip to the pub!
He joins the group as a post-doctoral research fellow after completing his PhD in Kyoto, Japan under Professor Akagi.
Welcome to Bristol and welcome to the FRG!
James’s paper entitled Imaging the Predicted Isomerism of Oligo(aniline)s: A Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study has just been published online in the micro- and nanotechnology journal Small!
The work was performed in collaboration with Prof. Heinrich Hoerber in Physics and Dr Neil Fox in Chemistry. For the first time, we have directly observed the cis and trans isomers of tetra(aniline)s in the half-oxidised EB state. Our findings shed light on why oligo(aniline)s do not always self-assemble as easily as other materials, and how we could improve their properties.
Yaozu’s paper in Macromolecules on novel porous materials based on perylene diimides and triazines have appeared online! This exciting work (in collaboration with Jens Weber) discusses the preparation of porous and related carbon materials, and their excellent selectivity and capability for CO2 uptake.
Please read more here!
Charl was invited by Dr Sebastien Clement, from the Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier‘s “Molecular chemistry and structuration of solids (CMOS)” group. The ICG is affiliated with both the CNRS and the University of Montpellier. Charl gave a talk on Friday, and spent a very interesting day with Sebastien and his colleagues in the CMOS group.
There were plenty of opportunities to discuss science and collaborations over good food and good wine in a very pleasant part of France over the rest of the weekend!
The latest publication from the Faul group has just been accepted for publication in Macromolecules! The work by Yaozu focuses on microporous polyimides for CO2 uptake.
Paper here.
Frank, a professor of organic materials and nanosystems at the University of Würzburg, Germany, visited Bristol on 4th March to present his exciting work on perylene diimide materials and their supramolecular assembly.
His lecture was preceded by a series of excellent talks by Bristol postgraduate researchers on topics from nanoparticle assembly at interfaces to the monitoring of micellular growth using the latest fluorescent techniques!
Faul Research Group 
