Japan Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship

Congratulations to Adam Sweetman for the award of a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship. This will fund a three month visit to the group of Oscar Custance, world-leaders in atomic manipulation using dynamic force microscopy.

Nanoscience Group Storm Tesella Poster Competition

Students in the Nanoscience Group won first, second, and third prizes in the Tesella Poster competition.
1st Place: Julian Stirling, with the title: "Computer Vision and Automation at the Atomic Scale"
2nd Place: James Bailey, with the title: "Thin film polymer photonics: Spin cast distribution Bragg reflectors"
3rd Place: Rosanna Danza, with the title: "Disentangling atomic and electronic structure in scanning probe images of Si(100)"

Thesis Hell! - A video!

James Hayton has uploaded the video for his presentation "Thesis Hell!" .

NanoSMat Young Scientist's Lecture Competition

Kevin Langley came second in the Young Scientist's Lecture Competition at NanoSMat-5 (Reims, France, 19-21 October 2010) . The title of his lecture was "Micro-wrinkled bilayer structures with gradient wetting properties".

Thesis Hell!

James Hayton, alumnus of the Nanoscience Group and author of the blog 10minus9, will be giving a seminar entitled "Thesis Hell" on Thursday Nov. 11 (B13, 13:00). Ultimately, the hell of writing a thesis is avoidable through forming the right habits. This talk will tell you how.

Vice Chancellor's Achievement Award for Claire Sweetenham

Claire Sweetenham has been awarded a Vice Chancellor's Achievement Award for her Physics outreach work. The award will be presented at the Alumni Laureate Awards Event on September 22nd .

Nanoscience Gallery

A set of images encompassing the breadth of research performed within the Nanoscience group has been installed on the B floor (opposite B23) in the Maths and Physics Building. The collection, entitled "a sense of scale", displays images obtained via a range of microscopy techniques, with image sizes spanning nanometres to millimetres.

Poster Prize for Rosanna

Rosanna Danza won 1st prize in the poster competition at the UK SPM meeting (London, June 30/July 1). The title of her poster was "Dynamic STM and qPlus AFM of the Si(100) surface".

Article Published on guardian.co.uk

James Hayton, alumnus of the Nanoscience group and author of the 10minus9 nanoscience blog, has recently been published on the Science Blog of the Guardian website. His article titled "Government-backed report on future jobs in science had major flaws" examines the research performed by futurist consultancy firm Fast Future for the commissioned report "The Shape of Jobs to Come".

Poster Prize for Alex Saywell

Alex Saywell has won 1st prize in the poster competition at CMMP 2009. His poster was titled "Conformational Control of porphrin oligomeric and polymeric assemblies on a Au(111) substrate".

Oral Presentation Prize for Zoe Langham

Zoe Langham has won the Best Oral Presentation at a recent Ph.D. Review Day held by AstraZeneca for the students funded by their Pharmaceutical Analytical Research & Development division. Her presentation was titled "Characterisation of Felodipine/Copovidone Solid Dispersions in Aqueous Environments".

ISSC Oral Presentation and Poster Presentation Prizes

Congratulations to Adam Sweetman and Andy Stannard for winning an oral presentation and poster presentation prize, respectively, at the 17th Interdisciplinary Surface Science Conference in Reading this week. Adam's talk was entitled "Qplus NC-AFM of Si(100):Activating the c(4x2)->p(2x1) transition with sub-nm oscillations" and the title of Andy's poster was "Directing the nucleation of nanoparticle rings".

Andy Stannard, Over-Achiever??

Congratulations to Andrew Stannard on winning a University of Nottingham Endowed Postgraduate Award!
Photos of the event are also available here.

Public debate: "Is public science a public good?"

The Nanoscience Group, jointly with Jack Stilgoe of the Demos think tank, organised a public debate, "University Science: A Public Good?" which was held in Portcullis House at 16:00 on May 15 2008. The panel members were:

Ian Gibson, Member of Parliament
Ben Goldacre (author of The Guardian's Bad Science column);
Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Buckingham and author of Sex, Science, and Profit
Philip Moriarty, School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Nottingham
John Pethica, Chief Scientist, National Physical Laboratory
Jack Stilgoe, Demos (Chair)

The debate was filmed and video footage is available online (Part 1 and Part 2). In addition, Nanotechnology Perceptions featured commentary pieces from three of the panel members - John Pethica, Terence Kealey, and Philip Moriarty - in its July 2008 issue (Vol. 4, No. 2).

The Nanoscience group A-level Masterclass

The Nanoscience group ran an A-level Masterclass on Saturday Sept. 27 2008 in the School of Physics & Astronomy. A group of 25 students were involved in a variety of nanoscience hands-on experiments and tutorials, including an AFM nanolithography session. The nanoscale "artwork" produced by the students is now available for viewing in our Resources section.

Self-assembly and Self-organisation at Surfaces and Interfaces (SSSI) 2008

The Nanoscience group, with Ulli Steiner, University of Cambridge, and Uwe Thiele, University of Loughborough co-organised a conference entitled "Self-assembly and Self-organisation at Surfaces and Interfaces" which was held in the University of Cambridge from December 10 - 12 2008. The conference, which represented the end-of-project meeting for the EU FP6-funded PATTERNS Research Training Network, attracted a total of 95 delegates. The programme and list of invited speakers are available here.

IOP - Nanoscale and Single Molecule Mechanics One Day Meeting

The Nanoscience Group hosted a one-day meeting, Nanoscale and Single Molecule Mechanics, on July 14 2008 in the School of Physics & Astronomy. The meeting, organised by the Nanoscale Physics and Technology (NPT) Group of the IoP and co-sponsored by the NPT and Thin Films and Surfaces groups, focused on the latest advances in nanoscale and single molecule mechanics. The meeting featured talks from many outstanding scientists working in this exciting sub-field of nanoscience. Full details are available here.

International Workshop : Pattern formation: Self-organization versus Self-assembly?

The Nanoscience group co-organised a well-attended international workshop on self-assembly and self-organisation at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme in Dresden in December 2007. A signficant number of world-leading scientists spoke at this workshop and a range of exciting topics in state-of-the-art nanoscience were covered. Click here for more information.

Formal Opening of the Nottingham Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Centre (June 18 2007)

The Nottingham Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Centre (NNNC) was formally opened by Prof. Harry Kroto on Monday June 18. The programme for the day also featured lectures from three other world-leading scientists: Don Eigler, Fraser Stoddard, and Colin Humphreys. In addition, the Institute of Physics Nanoscale Physics and Technology (NPT) Group held its annual one day meeting and AGM at the University of Nottingham on the morning of June 18. Full details of both meetings are available here .

New MSc in Nanoscience

The School of Physics & Astronomy, in partnership with the Schools of Chemistry, Pharmacy, and M3 (Mechanical, Materials & Manufacturing Engineering) is offering an exciting new MSc in Nanoscience course from Oct. '06. This course will be co-ordinated and run by the Nottingham Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Centre. Further information is available on the MSc in Nanoscience website.

For she's a jolly good fellow...

For the third year in succession Nottingham University has offered two promising young female researchers in science, engineering or technology an Anne McLaren fellowship. Named after Professor Dame Anne McLaren - an inspirational scientist who is best known for her work on reproductive biology - the scheme offers the recipients two years of independent funding, flexibility and a mentor. Seven fellowships have been awarded so far, and we are delighted to announce that one of the fellows, Dr Karina Schulte, is working in our group as of 1st of March.

Previously employed as a Post-Doc with us, she will now start her own research project which is based around phthalocyanine-filled nanotubes. The phthalocyanines are a class of stable, blue/green synthetic pigments and are related to important biological molecules like heme and chlorophyll. Their strong optical absorption is already being exploited in photovoltaic devices containing phthalo-fullerene mixed phases and they also display other useful bulk optical properties including dichroism and photoluminescence. In this regard, transition metal containing phthalocyanines are of even greater interest as they can also carry localised magnetic moments, as is the case with cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) which forms the initial focus of the project.

In close collaboration with Dr Andrei Khlobystov, who is based in Chemistry, they have already shown that it is possible to trap the CoPc molecules inside double wall carbon nanotubes and a series of characterization experiments, including X-ray spectroscopy in synchrotrons and magnetic measurements (with Dr Duncan Gregory - Nottingham/Glasgow) is underway.

Nottingham nanotechnology debate transcript now downloadable...

On August the 24th 2005, the School of Physics & Astronomy hosted a debate entitled Nanotechnology: Radical new Science or Plus Ça Change? which brought together leading British scientists and key proponents of the molecular manufacturing concept (originally put forward by Eric K. Drexler in 1981) to debate the science, feasibility, and potential of nanomachines. A transcript of the entire debate features in the November 2005 issue of Nanotechnology Perceptions and is also available for download here. A variety of thought-provoking technical and societal issues were raised during the well-attended two hour session (which featured as a component of the EPSRC-funded 2005 UK Summer School in Surface Science). An introductory commentary by Philip Moriarty may be downloaded here. Video footage of the entire debate can be viewed here.