2022 Highlights
November 2022
Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan gave an invited keynote talk at the ICRANSD-22 under the lecture session "Nanomaterials, Nanodevices: Fabrication, Characterization and Application" on November 11th, 2022. For more information, click here: https://icransd.mauedu.in/#home
October 2022
Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan gave an invited keynote talk at the NanoScientific Forum Europe under the lecture session of "Novel materials under the Force Microscope: From 2D structures to functional materials" on October 6th, 2022. Full program here: https://event.nanoscientific.org/eu/program
Gerard Boraku re-joined the group as a 3rd year undergraduate project student. Gerard going to study the "thermal stability of two-dimensional III-VI van der Waals layered materials".
September 2022
Let's welcome Hilary Philipson to our group. Hilary started her MPhil project entitled "Structural and electronic properties of 2D materials".
The 1-day Workshop on Materials for Sustainability organized by Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan and Dr. Juliana Morbec was successfully held at Keele Hall in Keele University on the 22nd of September 2022. The workshop put together very interesting talks (https://iop.eventsair.com/wms2022/programme). Following the success of this workshop, the next workshop date has been announced by Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan, the 3rd of July 2023.
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August 2022
Dr. Juliana Morbec, Dr. Peter Kratzer, and Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan joined the Electronic Structure Journal as guest editors. Electronic Structure publishes multidisciplinary research covering all theoretical and experimental aspects of electronic structure research, including the development of new methods. It is dedicated to the entirety of electronic structure research and its community, spanning materials science, physics, chemistry, and biology. Dr. Juliana Morbec, Dr. Peter Kratzer, and Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan will work on the focus issue of "Mixed-Dimensional van der Waals Heterostructures Based on 2D Materials".
Dr. Juliana Morbec, Dr. Peter Kratzer, and Dr. Nilanthy Balakrishnan organized a mini-colloquium on "van der Waals Heterostructures" (https://iop.eventsair.com/cmd29/van-der-waals-heterostructures-combining-organic-molecules-and-2D-materials) as part of the CMD29 conference (https://lnkd.in/e5YmvXe5). The mini-colloquium went well on the 23rd of August 2022. Dr. Balakrishnan presented her recent work on InSe-based heterostructures at this conference.
Dr. Balakrishnan completed the Aurora 2021-2022, an Advance Higher Education's leadership development initiative for women. She received her badge and certificate on the 10th of August 2022.
July 2022
Dr. Balakrishnan completed her Royal Society Short Industry Fellowship with Park Systems UK Limited.
The 12th edition of the Graphene Conference series, the largest European Event in Graphene and 2D Materials held in Aachen, Germany (July 05-08, 2022). Dr. Balakrishnan and Lewis Adams presented their work at this international conference. Congratulations Lewis Adams for winning the Graphene 2022 Travel Grant of €150.
June 2022
Menna Morgan visited Professor Francesca Intoniti's laboratory, the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy, at the University of Florence, Italy. Menna's two weeks research visit was supported by the Turing Scheme, the KPA bursary, and the FNS PGR development and transferrable skills training fund. During her visit, Menna learned the Scanning near-field optical microcopy (SNOM) measurement techniques.
Dr. Balakrishnan attended the CMQM 2022 (Condensed Matter and Quantum Materials) conference in Bath (20 - 22 June). She gave a talk on her group's recent development in the growth of different 2D materials.
Gerard Boraku joined the group as a summer internship student, funded by the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences (SCPS), Keele University. The SCPS is funding up to four summer research internships. This opportunity is available to any of the students across the schools’ programs who are entering their final year in 2022/23. These summer internships are offered competitively to take up in any of the research areas within the school. Gerard's project entitled “Fabrication and characterization of van der Waals heterostructures”. Gerard will learn to fabricate different 2D material heterostructures using the recently bought 2D materials transfer system under the Royal Society Research grant.
May 2022
Lewis Adams attended the E-MRS spring 2022 meeting (May 30th - June 3rd) and presented a poster at symposium K: Thin Film Chalcogenide Photovoltaic Materials. He is one of the finalists for the E-MRS Young Researcher Awards.
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Lewis Adams and Menna Morgan presented their work at the Keele Chimical Sciences Symposium on 27th May 2022. Let's celebrate Chemical Science Research at Keele.
April 2022
Congratulations Dr. Balakrishnan and Lewis Adams for winning the Midlands Innovation's Technician-Led Equipment Sharing funding of £4,585. They will access the Raman spectroscopy and the Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) facilities available at the Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre (nmRC) at the University of Nottingham.
Let's celebrate the article publication "Memristive effects due to charge transfer in graphene gated through ferroelectric CuInP2S6" on 2D Materials. Congratulations Dr. Balakrishnan and her collaborators.
March 2022
Dr. Balakrishnan is pleased to join the program committee of the UK Semiconductors 2022. She will be a part of Symposium TMD: 2D Materials, and will closely work with Prof. Alexander Tartakovskii (University of Sheffield) and Dr. Daniel Wolverson (University of Bath)
Congratulations Dr. Balakrishnan and Dr. Juliana Morbec for winning the Keele Key Fund of £2,000 to organize a '1-day Workshop on Materials for sustainability' at Keele University. The Keele Key Fund was established to bring together the goodwill and generosity of Keele alumni to financially benefit the university and its students. The Keele Key Fund invests annually in creative, innovative and extraordinary projects that will have an immediate impact on the campus and enhance the student experiences and have a positive impact on the student community.
February 2022
Lewis Adams visited the SOLEIL Synchrotron ANTARES beamline between the 23rd and 27th of February 2022. He gained experience in nano-ARPES measurements. Thank you very much to Dr. Pavel Dudin and Dr. Jose Avila for helping Lewis with the experiment.
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Congratulations to Dr. Juliana Morbec (Keele University, UK), Dr. Peter Kratzer (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), and Dr. Balakrishnan (Keele University, UK) for the acceptance of their proposed mini-colloquium "Van der Waals heterostructures: combining organic molecules and 2D materials" at the CMD29– the 29th general conference of the Condensed Matter Division of the EPS, organized jointly by the IoP and EPS.
Congratulations Dr. Balakrishnan for receiving the Royal Society Short Industry Fellowship. Under this fellowship, Dr. Balakrishnan will gain industry experience by working with Park Systems UK Limited, an Atomic Force Microscope company based in Nottingham, UK. This 5 months fellowship commences on the 1st of March 2022.
