A. Jorge Sobrido´s Research Group
Sustainable Materials for Energy Technologies
Jesus has just joined the group to perform his PhD on biodegradable electrospun materials with antibacterial applications. His research is funded by CONACyT, Mexican National Council of Science and Technology. Welcome Jesus! Looking forward to getting started with this exciting PhD project.
Welcome Stiven! Stiven will be doing a short stay in our group (Nov 2021 – Feb 2022) to work on bacterial nanocellulose for energy storage in collaboration with Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, in Colombia, where he conducts his degree. We hope this collaboration within the framework of a Newton Fund -British Council funding will lead to great results. Hope Stiven has time to enjoy London, too!
This week has been Sustainability Week at QMUL and we have organised lab tours to show students and staff how we process lignin, a biomass waste product from the paper industry into advanced materials for energy storage, in particular for redox flow batteries. Thanks all the could make it! You were very engaging. And thanks Gengyu and Michael for helping make this event happen!
We finally got together to celebrate some recent success and enjoy probably the last bbq of the year! Thank you all. IT was great fun.
Cheers to more things to celebrate soon!
Finally managed to get all the team together to have our Group Photo! Thank you All.
Congratulations to Qian who has won a 2021 SEMS Postgraduate Research Excellence Award for her work on Hematite/Carbon dots photoanodes for water oxidation, published recently in Nanoscale. Well done Qian!
Welcome to Dr Michael Thielke who has joined the team as a postdoctoral researcher to develop sustainable fibres as electrodes for flow batteries using electrospinning as part of Ana’s UKRI FLF.
Welcome Michael! I hope you have a great time at QMUL and we look forward to doing lots of science together.
Abstract
Photoelectrochemical imaging has great potential in the label-free investigation of cellular processes. Herein, we report a new fast photoelectrochemical imaging system (PEIS) for DC photocurrent imaging of live cells, which combines high speed with excellent lateral resolution and high photocurrent stability, which are all crucial for studying dynamic cellular processes. An analog micromirror was adopted to raster the sensor substrate, enabling high-speed imaging. α-Fe2O3 (hematite) thin films synthesized via electrodeposition were used as a robust substrate with high photocurrent and good spatial resolution. The capabilities of this system were demonstrated by monitoring cell responses to permeabilization with Triton X-100. The ability to carry out dynamic functional imaging of multiple cells simultaneously provides improved confidence in the data than could be achieved with the slower electrochemical single-cell imaging techniques described previously. When monitoring pH changes, the PEIS can achieve frame rates of 8 frames per second.
