News

Morten Moller’s paper on the analysis of the role of the tip state in scanning probe atomic manipulation, Nanotechnology 28 (2017) 075302, was selected by the Institute of Physics as a Nanotechnology 2017 highlight. See the entire list of highlights here.

In collaboration with the Institute of Physics, the group is organising the next International NC-AFM conference. This will be held in the East Midlands Conference Centre from July 25 – 29. See http://ncafm2016.iopconfs.org/home for details. The early registration deadline is just a week away…

Alex Summerfield wins the scanning probe microscopy section with the 'Supramolecular Nanoring Network'. It's a constant current Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy image of a porphyrin nanoring network on a HOPG surface imaged in liquid. Each nanoring consists of 12 covelently-linked porphyrin monomers. Image size 25 x 25 nm.

We're delighted to welcome two researchers from North America and South America, respectively, to the group. Charles Tschirhart, currently an undergraduate at Caltech, will be spending a year in Nottingham from Sept. 2015 working on atomic manipulation, funded by a Fulbright Scholarship. Shortly before Charles arrives, Filipe Junqueira (from Sao Paulo, Brazil) will start a PhD in our group- read his story here.

Congratulations to Sam Jarvis for winning the Young Scientist prize at the recent 11th International Conference on the Structure of Surfaces at the University of Warwick. Sam was awarded the prize “…for his important insights into tip-surface interactions in dynamic force microscopy, stemming from combined experimental and theoretical studies”.

The contestants were given 3 minutes in which to amaze and dazzle the audience by explaining their current research. Each talk was judged by a panel of 4 experts in a Strictly Come Dancing style score out of ten. The runner-up was David Farmer, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, who is studying the hypersonic properties of polymer nanostructures. In his talk, entitled “The Joy of Hitting Things” he described how his research involved using lasers to vibrate and measure the properties of polymers. He received £250 in cash and a trophy.

Dr. Philipp Rahe has just joined Professor Moriarty's research group as a Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow. Within the scope of the 'DECiMOL' project, he will be working on the characterization and exploitation of hybrid organic-silicon systems. Philipp arrived from the University of Utah, where he investigated electronic properties of insulator-supported molecules. Prior to Utah, he finished his PhD at the Universty of Mainz exploring molecular self-assembly on insulating surfaces.

Dr. James O'Shea has just been awarded a Joint research grant from the University of Nottingham along with Joachim Schnadt at the University of Lund in Sweden to develop an electrospray deposition source for the Ambient Pressure XPS beamline at the MAX-lab synchrotron radiation facility. This is a short term project that will be completed by the end of June this year.

The contestants were given 3 minutes in which to amaze and dazzle the audience by explaining their current research. Each talk was judged by a panel of experts in a Strictly Come Dancing style score out of ten. Andy Stannard also managed to make his entire presentation rhyme! Click here to read more.

Congratulations to Sam Jarvis for being awarded the new Franks PhD Prize by the Nanoscale Physics and Technology Group of the Institute of Physics. The Franks prize was jointly awarded to Sam for the best PhD thesis completed by a student member of the NPTG in the year 2012 and is funded both by the IOP and the National Physical Laboratory.

The group's own Prof. Peter Beton has been awarded the Tabor Medal and prize by the Institute of Physics for pioneering work on molecular organisation and manipulation on surfaces, particularly in relation to molecular rolling, the formation of nanoporous templates and entropically stabilised molecular tilings.

The medal is awarded every two years for distinguished research in surface or nanoscale physics.

Group member Dave Farmer recently competed in the June 2013 edition of 'I'm a Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here!', winning the Quantum Zone. I'm A Scientist is an online event where school students get to meet and interact with scientists. Imagine an X Factor-style competition between scientists, where the students are the judges! Students challenge the scientists over intense, fast-paced online live chats. They then ask the scientists all the questions they want to, and vote for their favourite scientist to win a prize of £500 to communicate their work with the public.

Decribing himself as "excitable, friendly, mischievous", Dave plans to put the winnings towards a series of educational YouTube videos.

Group members Julian Stirling, Dr. Richard Woolley, and Prof. Philip Moriarty have released a software toolbox for analysing SPM image data. The toolbox, called Scanning Probe Image Wizard, is released as an open source toolbox for MATLAB, so anyone can freely use the software, or even edit the code for their own specific applications. The tools are applicable to all SPM images, but the main focus is on images with atomic or molecular resolution.

The sofware can be downloaded here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/spiw/

Maria Wieland, a student in the group has won first prize in the 2013 Tesella Poster competition, completing a hat-trick of victories by students from the group following the excellent form in both 2012 and 2011.

1st Place: Maria Wieland, with the poster: "Transfer of Organic Networks from Metal to Dielectric Surfaces"

The Tessella Poster Competition is held annually for postgraduate students from the School of Physics and Astronomy to showcase their research.

A student of the group, Julian Stirling was recently nominated for the IOP Communcations Group Early Career Physics Communicator Award. Julian was one of four candidates shortlisted for the final award, which recognises researchers at the start of their career who have an excellent record of organising and participating in public outreach events. The four shortlisted candidates were invited to an open awards ceremony event on 20th November 2012 at the Institute of Physics in London where they all delivered short talks describing their communication activities.

Details of some of Julian's oureach activities can be found on his website

In an effort to make scanning probe microscopy (SPM) a more effective and efficient technique, group members Dr. Richard Woolley, Julian Stirling and Prof. Philip Moriarty along with collaborators from Computer Science (UoN) and the Beckman Institute (Illinois) have developed a machine learning protocol that utilizes evolutionary optimization algorithms to automatically control and optimize SPM. The genetic algorithm allows both the probe, which is used to scan the surface of interest, and the associated control parameters to be tuned automatically to provide the best image possible.

The group’s work was recently honoured at the 2012 Human-Competitive awards or “Humies”, a contest hosted as part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), with the silver award for human-competitive results in evolutionary and genetic programming.

The group is delighted to announce that Dr Mike Smith has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship in the Physics Department at Nottingham University starting October 2012. He will undertake a project entitled ‘Extensional flow and jamming of concentrated colloidal suspensions’.

Concentrated suspensions of particles form the basis of many everyday fluids: toothpaste, blood, ink, soil. The understanding, controlling and modifying of flows of colloidal fluids has relevance to a wide variety of practical situations: manufacturing process design, understanding why blood vessels block, or accurately controlling droplet detachment in inkjet printing.

Further details of Mike’s work can be found on his website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppzmis

Group members Mike Smith and James Sharp recently had an article selected for the cover of the RSC journal, Soft Matter.

Amyloid Spherulites have been associated with certain pathologies, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's disease. In this study giant amyloid spherulites formed from bovine insulin in vitro were found to exhibit beautiful coloured rings.

Using a ray tracing technique the optical path of rays through these spherulites was modelled and structural information about the arrangement of fibrils was obtained and measurements of the intrinsic and form birefringences of the consitituent fibrils were made.

Giant Amyloid Spherulites reveal their true colours
Soft Matter, 8, 3751-3755 (2012)

Students from the Nanoscience Group have won both first and second prizes in the 2012 Tesella Poster competition, continuing the excellent form shown in 2011.

1st Place: Dave Farmer, with the poster: "Mass Sensing using Sub-Terahertz Vibrations in Thin Polymer Films"

2nd Place: Faris Sinjab, with the poster: "Photo-induced growth of silver nanoparticles for in-situ preparation of tips for near-field Raman spectroscopy"

The Tessella Poster Competition is held annually for postgraduate students from the School of Physics and Astronomy to showcase their research.

Congratulations are due to Dr. 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 at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, world-leaders in atomic manipulation using dynamic force microscopy.

The fellowship programme provides the opportunity for short-term visits for young pre- and post-doctoral UK researchers and researchers from Europe and North America based in the UK to conduct cooperative research with leading research groups at Japanese Universities and Institutions. The programme is designed to provide researchers with first-hand experience of the research and living environment in Japan, whilst expanding academic exchange between Japan and the United Kingdom.

Dr Andrew Stannard, a research fellow in the group, has completed the 2011 London Marathon in aid of IOP for Africa, the IOP’s first ever fundraising campaign.

The project, which aims to generate funds for projects in sub-Saharan countries training physics teachers and providing vital equipment to schools (as part of IOP’s Physics for Development programme), has so far raised over £18,000 since its launch in December 2010.

Andrew, who completed the marathon in a superb time of 04:54:17, hopes to have raised at least a four-figure sum.

Students from the Nanoscience Group have locked out the podium in the 2011 Tesella Poster competition, winning first, second and third prizes.

1st Place: Julian Stirling, with the poster: "Computer Vision and Automation at the Atomic Scale"

2nd Place: James Bailey, with the poster: "Thin film polymer photonics: Spin cast distribution Bragg reflectors"

3rd Place: Rosanna Danza, with the poster: "Disentangling atomic and electronic structure in scanning probe images of Si(100)"

The Tessella Poster Competition is held annually for postgraduate students from the School of Physics and Astronomy to showcase their research.