A summary of some of the recent work ongoing in our group can be found on the group poster. Click for a high resolution link.

Victoria’s paper, Investigating the Role of the Organic Cation in Formamidinium Lead Iodide Perovskite using Ultrafast Spectroscopy has just been accepted in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Victoria’s work addresses the controversial topic of long-lived (anti-) ferroelectric domains through organic cation alignment in lead-halide perovskite thin films using two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy. Through anisotropy measurements, Victoria showed that alignment was short-lived and cannot explain the observed low charge-carrier recombination rates. Complimentary time-resolved infrared measurements examined the vibrational dynamics of the cation in the conduction band. These data show an unusual enhancement of the vibrational dipole moment due to nascent proximal charge carriers. The very talented Dr. Devendra Tiwari prepared the thin film samples using a novel preparation method. The studies were performed both at Bristol and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The ASAP version of the paper can be found here and the work is featured on the School of Chemistry’s news website.

Congratulations to first year PhD student Giordano Amoruso who won a poster prize at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Spectroscopy and Dynamics group meeting held at Durham University. Giordano’s poster described his very recent results detailing the excited state proton transfer in a model chemical system.

Tom’s invited review article, “Recent Advances in Multidimensional Ultrafast Spectroscopy”, has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Royal Society Open Science. The paper details the recent innovations in extreme cross-peak spectroscopies, action spectroscopies such as phase-modulated fluorescence or photocurrent 2D spectroscopy, 2D Raman and 2D THz spectroscopies.

Tom has been successful in securing an University Research Fellow Enhancement Award from the Royal Society. The award of £100K will be transformative to the group, giving us funds to buy essential pieces of apparatus that will enable us to further our exploration of charge and energy transport mechanisms in nanomaterials and biomolecules.

Laboratory renovations to our laboratory were completed in April 2017, with laser installation in May 2017. We took our first (publishable) data in November 2017, down to the immense efforts of Aditi and Marta. A selection of images showing the laboratory in various stages of refurbishment, and the TA experimental apparatus are shown below.

Well done to Marta Duchi for passing her Italian Esame di Stato exam. This now means Marta is now abilitata, and that she is officially recognised as a professional chemist!

A Faraday Discussion focused on exploring ‘Ultrafast Photoinduced Energy and Charge Transfer’ has finally been confirmed for 8-10 April 2019 in Ventura, California. The four main themes of the meeting are: Energy and charge transport in natural photosynthesis, photovoltaics and bio-inspired light harvesting, photo-induced electron transfer, photo-protection/photo-damage in natural systems.

Details of the opening and closing lectures, and invited speakers will be available shortly, and found on the RSC website.

PhD student Victoria Taylor presented her 2DIR studies of formadinium lead iodide perovskite at a semi-conductor mini-symposium, organised by the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials.

Welcome to Giordano Amoruso who joins the Oliver group as a new PhD student. Giordano recently completed his Master’s degree at the University of Padua. At Padua, Giordano worked in the laboratory of Dr Elisabetta Collini using 2D electronic spectroscopy to investigate the ultrafast dynamics of quantum dots.