Group News

We are delighted to have been able to attend the CPE SEM Summer School in Snowdonia! We had a fantastic week filled with scientific discussions through insightful talks (Ji-Seon, Katie, Charlie, Tianhao, and Carlo), as well as engaging poster presentations (Douglas, Chloe, and Yijia). It was fun to make new friends from other research groups and to enjoy activities including rock climbing and kayaking. Congratulations to Charlie for winning the talk runner-up prize and to Douglas for receiving the best poster prize!

Our group traveled to Chester, a charming and historical city, for our annual group away day(s) this year! We enjoyed some interesting talks from the group members, fun board games, tricky escape rooms, and delicious food!

Ji-Seon attended the IOP Summer Festival "A Celebration of Physics: On the Road to a Sustainable World" at Silverstone, where she was presented the Nevill Mott Medal and Prize.

Congratulations to Dr Katia Pagano for passing her PhD viva! Katia's PhD focused on molecular structure-dependent electron-phonon coupling in organic semiconductors. We wish her all the best in the future!

Charlie presented his work on charge transfer complex formation between organic interlayers drives light-soaking in large area perovskite solar cells in the 2024 annual CPE symposium.

Congratulations to Katie, who has been awarded a Sustainable Energy & Fuels poster prize at the CPE annual symposium 2024.

Congratulations to Katie, Chiara, Yi-chun, and Ella on their PhD graduation at the Royal Albert Hall, as well as Shiyu and Ellen on their master's degrees!

We really enjoyed the symposium on photoconversion in organic and hybrid semiconductors, which is co-sponsored by CPE and ATIP. Great to see so many great speakers and interesting talks!

A massive congratulations to Song Yi who has been appointed as an assistant professor at Pukyong National University, Busan.

Happy International Women's Day! Ji-Seon recently contributed to the Women in Science event hosted by the British Embassy in Seoul. We celebrate the incredible contributions of the women in our group and across science.

We wish all the best to Chiara and Chun as they continue their research at Cambridge Display Technology Ltd.

Professor Ji-Seon Kim was recently awarded a fellowship by the Institute of Physics.

Congratulations to Ji-Seon, who has been awarded the Nevill Mott Medal and Prize.

Thanks to Katie, Emily, and Tianhao together with their perovskite and molecules models for the excellent work in representing the group at the Imperial Future Energy Festival 2023.

Charlie has just started his three month industrial placement at Oninn in Belo Horizonte, Brazil where he will be working on scale up of perovskite PV technology. We will miss you and are wishing you all the best of luck!!

To celebrate our achievements and the end of the academic year, the group enjoyed a dinner out together at Beyzade in East Putney!

Joel, Katie, Charlie, Tianhao, Lei and Ji-Seon attended the ATIP technical review in Swansea where they gave exciting updates on our achievements in PV technology.

Congratulations to Katie for her paper on Understanding Effects of Alkyl Side‐Chain Density on Polaron Formation, accepted in Advanced Materials.

Congratulations to Dr Chiara Labanti who passed her PhD viva! Chiara was part of the PE-CDT and her work focussed on organic NFA based OPV and OPD. We wish her all the best of luck at Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) as she continues to work on OPDs!!

We were delighted to welcome Prof Jeonghun Kwak and members of his group from Seoul National University (SNU) to South Kensington! Prof Kwak is an expert in electroluminescent materials and he and his group gave great talks on QLED technology and organic thermoelectric materials.

Congratulations to Charlie who was awarded the Journal of Materials Chemistry C poster prize at the CPE Annual Symposium. His poster was on his recent work on "Light-Soaking in Large Area Perovskite Solar Cells Driven by the Formation of Fullerene/BCP Charge Transfer Complexes."

It was great to see many former group members at the CPE CDT finale event. Alumni pictured here are Seb Wood (Principle Scientist at NPL), Joby Hollis (ex-NASA, now MSCA Fellow at the Natural History Museum), Saurav Limbu (QinetiQ) and Matyas Daboczi (PDRA in the Imperial ChemEng Department).

Ji-Seon gave a plenary talk at ICOE 2023 in Madrid where she also caught up with Ella, a former member of our group and now an editor at Nature Communications!

To celebrate the beginning of summer, we enjoyed a group dinner together eating chinese food at New Fortune Cookie in Queensway!

We are so grateful to have been able to go to the CPE SEM Summer School in Snowdonia, Wales! We had a great week filled with scientific discussions through insightful talks (Ji-Seon, Vick (PhD) and Emily (PhD)) as well as posters (Shiyu (MRes), Ellen (MRes) and Ying (PhD)). It was fun to make new friends from other research groups and to hike on Mount Snowdon!

We had a very successful trip to Brighton this year for our annual away day(s). We enjoyed some interesting scientific discussions, the sun, escape rooms and some great food!

Huge congratulations to Dr Katherine Steward who passed her viva! Katie's PhD focussed on Raman spectroscopy of organic semiconductors for sensing applications. We are excited to continue working with her, but now as a PostDoc in our group!

Prof. Ji-Seon Kim was recently specially appointed at Tokyo Institute of Technology! With support from the WRH Program, she is collaborating with Prof. Martin Vacha of the School of Materials and Chemical Technology. We look forward to their collaboration!

Congratulations to Dr Yi-Chun Chin for passing his PhD viva! Chun worked on both organic and perovskite photovoltaics. We wish him all the best of luck!!

Congratulations to Dr Ellasia Tan who passed her PhD viva! Ella was part of the CPE CDT and her work focussed on OECTs. We wish her all the best of luck as an Associate Editor at Nature Communications!

Congratulations to Dr. Joel Luke who has been awarded a Seeds for Success grant from Imperial College! This fund provides postdocs with funds to work on preliminary data for a fellowship application.

We had our annual Christmas gathering at Mildred's this year with both past and present group members. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Nanoanalysis Group!

We had the pleasure of having Professor Yun-Hi Kim from Gyeongsang National University in South Korea last week! We gave her a tour of our labs before she gave a talk on her work at the CPE symposium and joined us at our Christmas party. Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Katia presented her work at ICEL in London. She presented her work using ultrafast spectroscopy to unravel the optoelectronic properties of glycolated polymers.

Dr Joel Luke has been in Boston this week at MRS. He gave a presentation on his work on interfacial energetics in perovskite and organic photovoltaic devices.

We are sad that Song Yi is leaving but celebrated all her achievements while in the group with dinner at the Crabtree. We wish her all the best of luck and we will miss her very much!

Ji-Seon and Charlie attended the IWNBP conference in Evian. Ji-Seon was an invited speaker, giving an overview of the group's work, and Charlie gave a talk on his latest work with SPV. In addition to a week of interesting talks, they enjoyed fondue, a boat trip on Lake Annecy and plenty of wine.

To see in the start of a new term, the group enjoyed a dinner out together at Poppy's Thai in Hammersmith

Song Yi, Katie, Chun, Chiara, Minjie and Tianhao attended ICSM 2022 in Glasgow, presenting their latest work in talks and posters. The multi-session conference showcased the wide range of important developments in the field of organic electronics from the past few decades.

Congratulations to Ji-Seon, who has been recognised by the Royal Society of Chemistry as a highly cited author in 2021.

Congratulations to Ji-Seon, who has been admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC).

Ji-Seon, Song Yi, Chiara and Lei attended the CPE Summer School 2022 in Snowdonia, Wales. As well as talks from academics and PhD students, and poster presentations from the MRes students, they enjoyed hikes in the national park and refreshing swims in the nearby lakes. Congratulations to Tianhao, who won the runner up prize for his MRes poster.

Charlie, Katie and Katia spent the weekend volunteering at the Great Exhibition Road Festival 2022. They were making origami perovskite structures and teaching the next generation about solar cell technology.

The group took a trip to Bath for the first in-person Hybrid Electronics Workshop since 2019. As well as a range of interesting talks from members, the group enjoyed exploring the city, some tricky escape rooms and mini golf!

Congratulations to Joel and Matyas, who graduated at the Royal Albert Hall with their PhDs.

In honour of Donal Bradley's 60th birthday, Ji-Seon gave a talk at the Progress in Plastic Electronics Symposium. It was a great day full of talks from excellent speakers covering a wide range of topics highlighting the extensive research and progress made in Plastic Electronics over the past few decades.

Congratulations to Chiara, who completed her Late Stage Review at the annual PECDT Symposium and won the prize for the best talk for her presentation 'What is the Molecular Origin of Light Intensity Dependent Photoresponse in Organic Photodetectors?'.

Congratulations to Matyas, who was awarded the 2021 Alaisdair Campbell PhD Thesis Prize, which is awarded to the thesis in experimental physics work that demonstrates excellence and originality.

Congratulations to Joel, who won the 2021 Solid State Physics Prize for his PhD thesis 'Non-Fullerene Acceptor Based Organic Photovoltaics: Understanding Photostability and Low-Light Performance'. The prize is awarded to the thesis work that has made significant scientific contributions in an area of Solid State Physics. Joel's thesis also won the PECDT Best Thesis prize. Well done Joel!

Katia and Joel spent a week at the Central Laser Facility working with the Ultra Group. They performed transient absorption spectroscopy measurements on a range of OPV and sensor materials in preparation for transient Raman measurements that they will go back to perform in February.

We held our annual Christmas Symposium online. There were a great series of talks from past and present group members on topics ranging from the commercial future of organic electronic devices to decoding cryptic crosswords. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Nanoanalysis Group!

Ella gave an alumni talk at Queen Mary University on her path to her PhD in the Nanoanalysis Group.

Joel and Song Yi presented at the CPE Organic Photovoltaic Workshop. It was a great day packed with interesting talks from speakers from a range of backgrounds.

The group enjoyed a dinner out to celebrate Matyas and Joel completing their PhDs, as well as to welcome Emily to the group.

Congratulations to Dr Joel Luke, who passed his PhD viva with no corrections! Joel's PhD focused on understanding the photostability and low-light performance of NFA-based OPVs. We are happy to have Joel stay with us for the next year as a postdoc.

Congratulations to Yuang for completing his MRes in Plastic Electronic Materials, for which he received the Outstanding Achievement Prize for his performance in the course. Yuang completed his thesis 'Molecular origin of non-fullerene acceptor energetic shift and its impact on organic photovoltaics' in our group and will start his PhD at The Chinese University of Hong Kong soon. We wish him all the best for the future!

Ji-Seon, Ella, Katie, Katia, Chiara and Yuang enjoyed a week away in the Lake District for the CPE Autumn School 2021. It was a great week where the MRes students presented their final results and PhD students presented posters on their latest work. Congratulations to Yuang, who won runner up for his MRes presentation, and Ella, who won runner up for her poster flash talk.

Congratulations to Katie, who won the award for best talk in the EXSS department at the Physics Department's annual postgraduate symposium.

The JSK group enjoyed a dinner out at the pub for the first time in over a year!

This summer we are glad to welcome Sophie to our group, who will complete a UROP on 'Semiconductor blends: the relationship between structure and electrical properties'.

Congratulations to Hao for passing his viva and completing his PhD.

Over the sunny bank holiday weekend the Nanoanalysis Group enjoyed a picnic in Hyde Park. Activities included spike ball, retrieving our frisbee from trees and eating some scientific cupcakes.

Congratulations to Saurav for graduating with his PhD.

Congratulations to Matyas who passed his viva and completed his PhD.

Congratulations to the CPE CDT Prize winners, Saurav was presented an award for Runner Up Thesis of the Year and Joel and Katie were awared for their engagement work as part of the CPE Soft Electronic Materials Seminars.

We hosted our annual Hybrid Electonics Project Workshop remote and online. We had an excellent day of scientific and career talks from current and former group members followed a quiz and scavenger hunt.

Congratulations to our group members on their graduation, Iain and James for their PhDs and Chiara and Amber on their MRes.

Welcome to Yuang Fu who is joining our group for his MRes working on the energetics of OPV materials.

Ella was a guest speaker in Queen Mary's Alumni Session talking about her PhD and research in the Nanoanalysis Group.

We welcomed new members Song Yi, Charlie and Lei to our group over video chat, looking forward to meeting them in person too.

Ella presented her work on “Effects of Conjugated Backbone Structure in Semiconducting Copolymers for Transistor (OECT) Applications” at the PE-CDT Annual Symposium

Katie presented her work on “Molecular understanding of π-conjugated polymer/solid-state ionic liquid complex as a highly sensitive and selective VOC sensor” at the PE-CDT Annual Symposium

Ji-Seon joins the Applied Physics Letters as an Editorial Advisory Board member.

We were excited to meet Dr Song Yi Park, who will be joining our group in November as a NRF fellow, she introduced us to her exciting work on Charge Transport and Recombination of OPV devices.

Nanoanalysis group enjoyed their first in person event since lockdown. We went for a bank holiday cycle in Richmond Park followed by a picnic and a few games of spike ball.

Congratulations to Saurav who passed his viva and completed his PhD.

Ji Seon presented Critical Molecular Parameters of Non-fullerene Acceptors for High Performance Organic Solar Cells at Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics, HOPV20 Online Conference.

Matyas presented his work at CPE Soft Electronic Materials Seminar in his talk The slower the better - Observation of ion migration in perovskite layers by surface photovoltage.

Gabseok presented his work on Understanding the performance limiting factors in solution processed solid-state perovskite solar cells at the CPE Seminar in Soft Electronic Materials.

Very exciting talk by Saurav Limbu on electrochemical doping of semiconducting polymers for biosensing applications at our first virtual CPE Soft Electronic Materials Seminar.

Joel presented his work on “Organic Photovoltaic Stability, Understanding the molecular origin of degradation” at the EXSS PG Group Seminar.

We tested the collective wisdom of crowds to weight our two parcels to 11.4 and 8.2 kg compared to the actual weights of 12.3 and 10.3 kg. Next time we’ll use a bigger sample size.

Katie presented her work on organic biosensors at the EXSS PG Seminar.

Jinho presented his work on Polymer electrolyte for organic and perovskite solar cells at the inaugural CPE Seminar in Soft Electronic Materials.

Gabseok presented our group activities and his work on perovskites at the EXSS Post Doc Open Day.

Chiara won the Winter School PhD Talk Staff Choice Prize for her talk on “Non-fullerene acceptor engineering for highly operationally stable organic photovoltaics”

Matyas won Flash Talk Staff Choice Prize for his talk on “The slower the better – observation of ion migration in perovskite layers by surface photovoltage”

Dr Iain Hamilton visited Imperial to give a talk on "Development of Electroluminescent QD-LEDs for next-gen displays”.

We went for Korean Fried Chicken to wish good luck to Iain who is leaving to start a post doc with Donal Bradley in KAUST

Katie presented Reversible electrochemical interaction of organic semiconductors for biosensing applications at the Joint ICL-SCUT Workshop

Chiara presented High operational stability of organic bulk heterojunction solar cells achieved by new molecular design of non-fullerene acceptors at the Joint ICL-SCUT Workshop

Ji Seon presented Molecular Physics as a Critical Tool for Organic Semiconductors at the Joint ICL-SCUT Workshop

Ji Seon, Chiara and Katie went to Guangzhou to take part in the Joint ICL-SCUT Workshop on Organic/Perovskite Optoelectronics

Matyas enjoyed the 3 parallel symposia for perovskites at the 2019 Fall Meeting of MRS in snowy Boston

The remaining JSK group went out for a Japanese meal on South Kensington while Ji Seon and Hao enjoy their stay in Japan.

Welcome back to Joby, who visited Imperial to give an IMSE seminar: Searching for Signs of Life on Mars – Raman Spectroscopy for Planetary Science.

Ji-Seon gave a guest lecture series in Tokyo Tech on Plastic Electronics Materials and Devices.

Hao took part in the International Exchange Programme working with Professor Martin Vacha’s group in Tokyo Tech.

Congratulations to James who passed his viva and completed his PhD.

Congratulations to Katia who graduated with her MSci Physics degree.

We were excited to welcome Dr Diego Bagnis, Chief Scientific Officer at CSEM Brasil for a seminar on “From-Lab-to-Fab: Challenge Comparison about Scale-up of Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaic” and a day of talks on printed solar cells.

Chiara presented a poster of her MRes work on the stability of NFAs for OPV at the Plastic Electronics CDT Symposium 2019.

Joel presented his late stage review on his work on Fully scalable inverted organic solar cells for low-light applications and the role of light-soaking at the Plastic Electronics CDT Symposium.

At the Plastic Electronics CDT Symposium, Mátyás presented a talk on Energy level tuning of perovskite layers for efficient integrated perovskite/bulk heterojunction solar cells.

We were pleased to welcome Professor Antoine Kahn to our group for a day of exciting discussions on energetics, OPV, perovskite and sensors.

Welcome to Katia Pagano who will be joining our group in October.

Saurav presented his paper on the burn-in degradation of OPV solar cells at the inaugaural Solar Materials Journal Club.

Ella, Katie and Joel presented posters at this years Post Graduate Research Physics Symposium.

Mátyás, Saurav and Hao presented talks at this years Post Graduate Research Physics Symposium.

Mátyás presented his work on the energy level tuning of perovskite layers at Perovskite Solar and Optoelectronics Day at the University of Oxford.

Katie and Ella attended a Science Communication: What’s the Story course at the Royal Institution were they learnt about storytelling in science.

Chiara and Amber went to visit the new Chemistry cleanroom in White City to make OPVs as part of their MRes.

The CPE Symposium was concluded by an interesting talk by Jess Wade on The origins of circularly polarised luminescence in polymer light emitting diodes.

Many Nanoanalysis group members presented posters at the CPE Annual Symposium 2019 including Joel presenting his work on placement in csem brasil.

While in Budapest, we visited the Centre for Colloid Chemistry at Budapest University of Technology and Economics where we had a talk and a lab tour.

On the final day of the Hybrid Electronics workshop, we hosted a journal club where we looked at recent review papers covering our groups main research activities, OPV, OPD, perovskite and biosensing.

As a team building activity, we had an escape room where both teams escaped with 8 and 10 minutes left on the clock.

The scientific programme of the workshop consisted of members talks detailing the ongoing work in terms of the papers to publish or thesis chapters.

The Nanoanalysis group went to Budapest for the 3rd Hybrid Electronics Project Workshop

Welcome to our new Post Doc, Gabseok Seo. He as joined the Nanoanlysis group in May to work in Organic and Hybrid Electronic Materials and Devices

Saurav completed a 1-week experiments/discussion program in Samsung R&D Department (South Korea). “It was a unique experience, albeit just a week, in working on such a leading industrial giant”.

Today Joel starts a 10 week placement with his industrial sponsor CSEM Brasil. We look forward to hearing about all the exiting work he does during his time there.

This week the CPE hosted the second workshop between Imperial College and Tokyo Tech on electronic plastic, organic and hybrid materials. There were many great talks from both Imperial and Tokyo Tech academics on a variety of interesting topics.

Nanoanalysis were pleased to welcome Mary Erskine school to visit Imperial College. The girls were given talks and demonstrations from many wonderful researchers in Physics, Materials and Electrical and Electronic Engineering. A particular favourite was the first response medical drone, MediAI.

The Nanoanalysis held their annual Christmas get together with current members and alumi. This year, we enjoyed a round of crazy golf followed by a Thai meal.

We had a regular exciting group away day in York which is a very beautiful and traditional city. After the summary presentations for whole year work and future plans, we enjoyed nice sunshine, soccer, escape rooms, Korean language course and Korean-Chinese foods. Thanks Sooncheol and his wife for the preparation of delicious Korean sandwiches and rice roll.

Congratulations to Joel for the MRes graduation!

Congratulation to Prof Ji-Seon Kim who has been nominated for a Student Academic Choice Award (SACA)!!! The SACAs are an annual awards initiative organised by Imperial College Union that give Imperial students the chance to recognise and reward excellence among staff.

Our group had a good trip to Portsmouth. During this trip, we did presentations first about our present works and future plans. Then we had an interesting escape game, walked through Old Postsmouth and enjoyed fish and chips on the beach. Finally, we viewed the Gunwarf Quays which is the famous place in Portsmouth.

Ji-Seon, James, Saurav, Sooncheol and Hao attended the 4th International Workshop on Nano and Biophotonics in the Vogue, France (IWNBP). The meeting covered multidisciplinary disciplines in optics, chemistry, physics, and materials sciences for photonic device applications. In this conference, we also have an excursion and visited the Chauvet Cave, one of the most ancient decorated caves in the world.

Ji-Seon, Sooncheol and Joel all visited South Korea this autumn. Ji-Seon and Sooncheol attended The 2017 Korea Photovoltaic Society (KPVC) Fall Meeting, at which Ji-Seon was an invited speaker. Sooncheol and Joel both visited Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST)

Our annual Group Christmas Event was an instant success with assembly of current students and alumni.

Congratulations to Seb and all authors on his paper "Understanding the relationship between molecular order and charge transport properties in conjugated polymer based organic blend photovoltaic devices" which has placed fourth on the Journal of Chemical Physics' list of the 25 most accessed articles of 2014.

Jess and Saurav visit Cambridge Display Technology to talk about OPV stability.

The Nanoanalysis Group visit ETRI in South Korea

We had a great time sharing our work with visitors at the Imperial Science Festival 2014.

Nanoanalysis celebrated Christmas with a Group Christmas Party.