Long time no science - 3 minute wonder champion

I've just remembered about this blog and feel like on a Sunday morning whilst trying not to do my thesis I should update it.
So what's been happening then?

Well the most recent of things is that in October time I took part in a competition called the 3 minute wonder, hosted by the IoP (Institute of Physics)....and I only won!

Let me just explain the idea behind 3MW. It's the opportunity for research scientists to explain their work to an interested audience in 3 minutes. This sort of communication skill is incredibly important and useful as it requires us to convey a lot of information in a short time, as let's be honest anything beyond 3 minutes when someone is explaining resonance phonon energies in nano...zzzzzzz..

After winning this, I was invited to the national finals at the Royal Institutions Faraday Lecture theatre.

I'm probably in there somewhere, if in the future I invent time travel.

This lecture hall has had loads of famous scientists discuss their work throughout the years most notably at Christmas for the Christmas lecutres.
These include scientists from Faraday to Carl Sagan, it literally is unbelievable that I was afforded the honour to give a talk about my work in this hall.



On the final I sat waiting for my turn, I was 5th out of 10 incredible young scientists. All of whom gave very interesting talks, with so many unique and inspiring ways of explaining science. My most notable memory was a woman who was talking about hunting for exo-planets and compared finding an exo-planet to finding the shadow cast by a button illuminated by a bike light several miles away!!!

Elizabeth is next - she's talking about how she photographs planets! #3MWFinal pic.twitter.com/9zBtWQnmST

— Meriame Berboucha (@MBerboucha) May 5, 2016

(I can't see the button!!)

There were also 4 incredible judges. From left to right Fran Scott (CCBC), Marek Kukula (Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich), Helen Thomas (Exec Producer BBC Science) and Maggie Philbin (Bang Goes The Theory).

So I get up, bit nervous about talking infront of 300ish people and as soon as I start the countdown of 3 minutes begins. First of all I dropped my laser pointer, and I thought, well that's about right isn't it, but I quickly recovered, then just started talking about my work, the nanoscale, modern technology, my work on nanotubes and studying Raman and vibrations. Next thing I knew, everyone was clapping and it was all over. I had lots of questions thrown at me about my work, and even more during the break. The judges provided feedback (which was very complimentary) then I sat down listening to the other fantastic talks trying to process what just happened.

At the end of the evening we the scores were counted and before the winner announced there was an audience vote. I was gob-smacked when the graph came up showing that the audience voted for me as people's choice. I got our my seat trying not to fall over and embarrass myself and then shook hands with the President of the IoP who presented me with people's choice award. Then the moment I sat down, next thing I knew I was up again accepting the award and comically sized cheque as the winner of the 3 minute wonder for 2015/16

And finally the winner of #3MWFinal 2016 is @SpenJoeScience pic.twitter.com/TYZDZKqbO1

— Institute of Physics (@PhysicsNews) May 5, 2016

I'm sharing this now, as It's such a memorable night for me, I'm so glad to have been given the chance to lecture in this hall. It was truly great to talk about my work and have so many people ask questions and be interested in it. It was awesome to see other talented young scientists talk about their work with their own unique flare and passion for their subject. I fully recommend any scientist that wants to do some form of sci comm event or practice their communication skills to take part in this competition. 

Summer of Adventure

I sit here, back at my desk wondering how I got behind with my work. Then I realise, I've basically spent the whole of July away from the office. I'll break it down:

I attended the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.
This was an awesome experience, basically the idea is for a few select scientific research groups to showcase what they do at the Royal Society to the general public. It was fun and I must have spoke to 100's of people (all be it about the same thing) and it was sooo tiring! 1 week of staying in London engaging with so many different people at different levels takes its toll.

One other cool thing about this event was the chance to meet some well-known faces, such as Brian Cox and Martyn Poliakoff (left).
One memory that stands out particularly is the Wednesday evening party, standing by our stand presenting to officials...In tuxedos...in 32 degrees C. It was boiling! But we all managed!.








So what did we present exactly? Well our group focuses on trying to make the smallest nanowires to create devices. We do this using a technique known as Supercritical Fluid Electrodeposition, or SCFED.
What is SCFED i hear you shout? Well....
It's a technique of electrodeposition (the science of depositing stuff using electricity) and applying it to even smaller size scales. We get a template with holes ~2nm in diameter and begin electrodeposition, easy right? Wrong. Problem is the liquid we deposit from has a thing called surface tension, which prevents it from going down the holes. So why don't we use a gas? Well a gas would make it down the holes, but unfortunately gases aren't very good at holding things unlike a liquid. So we need a material, state of matter that's a bit of both. Hence a supercritical fluid. It has zero surface tension so can enter the holes, and has the solvent properties to hold the material we want to deposit.

Doing this we can deposit large arrays of wires in such an ordered, controlled fashion as to make transistors and electronic devices that are about 5x smaller than the current world record for such devices.
The outcome of this, hopefully, next generation electronic devices for memory storage, processors etc etc to make computers and phones even faster!

Next on the adventure list took me far away (sort of) to Vienna where I was to give a talk about Extreme Nanowires on my birthday! (What an amazing gift....)
This conference, ICAVS, aka the international conference on advanced vibrational spectroscopy, opened my eyes to a whole world of different applications of spectroscopy, from detecting explosives in luggage, to determining fake paintings and even mapping the homogeneity of cheap burger cheese.

The highlight was the final night where we had dinner in a frikkin palace! there was music by Mozart (not actually him) and dancing and great food and greeat company. Vienna was a lovely week, and a great place to spend my birthday, especially with my other half being there with me.













So that's nearly 3 weeks done now (i'm excluding another smaller conference I went on). Then I went on holiday for a week. And that's it! That explains right now why I feel like I've not done anything in a month, because I haven't!

Time to get back to writing a paper

Update on Blog

RIGHT
He said whilst pouring a glass of wine, it's time for me to update this rubbish blog and post some of my thoughts to the world. If i don't i'll probably have some sort of haemorrhage of verbal diarrhoea to anyone that stupidly asks ''Hey, how's it going''
So to move aside from physics for the moment, which is what I usually want to write about and a quick update on my life.

I'm in the 3rd year (our of 3.5) of my PhD, studying nanotechnology, and  today I've been hit with a bombshell that my funding may have run out, which means I'm pot-less, broke and any other synonym you can use. This spells out a bit of a problem for me, i'm looking into solving it, but life is so busy at the moment! Which is good in a way, as i'd rather be busy than bored stiff. What's going on you ask, well;

1. I've got to go to the Royal Society for a week to attend the Royal Society Summer exhibition.
2. I've got to deliver a presentation in Vienna for a conference
3. I've got to attend a summer school
4. I decided to take a voluntary job of heading the QLM post grad group
5. I have to attend another summer school
6. I'm writing 2 papers and collecting more data for my thesis
7. And I may have to start writing up

So yeah, a fair amount of stuff on my plate, well not on a plate, but more like a buffet of things to do, in the next 4 weeks, not to mention the other things I haven't listed.

A bit busy then. Can't complain about this really, as if i had nothing to do I would be annoyed. But the question is why do people always bite off more than we can chew. I do it all the time, I think for some weird reason to try and impress people, to help people and give the illusion I give a damn. Which seems a bit silly, will i stop no. Will i moan and drink more wine. Yes.

Watch out Graphene MOS is here

In the public eye Graphene seems to be the mascot for a whole world of 2 Dimensional materials, this ‘wonder’ material gained notoriety in the scientific community in 2004 when a research group at Manchester decided to pull apart what is basically pencil graphite with cellotape. This sparked an upsurge in research on graphene, but it wasn't until 2010 where Geim and Nosolev were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for its discovery, thus attracting more media attention. So that was just a little back story of why people have heard of this magical material, which could pave the way for a future of touch screen phones (that are supposed to bend). I won’t go too much into the details of what graphene is, and what it can do, save for saying it is a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal pattern, but most amazingly it is merely one atom thick.

However, it’s not just graphene that’s one atom thick, there are a whole host of other materials that can be made into monolayer sheets, such as Silicene, Germanene, Boron Nitride and what this article is about; Molybdenum Di-Sulphide (MoS2).

In their publication in Nanoscale, Dr K. Huang and his team from the ORC have synthesised large scale flakes of MoS2. This is a huge advance in materials science, as previously, production was random and led to unpredictable small flakes, not really useful when this material wants to contend with graphene. To find out more I went to find Dr Huang, and asked him some questions about this material.

1) Can you describe what MoS2 is, and how it differs from other layered materials, like graphene?

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), two-dimensional layered materials, such as MoS2, have become a noteworthy complimentary material to graphene sharing many of its properties. They offer properties that are unattainable in graphene, in particular providing a tuneable bandgap of ~1.8 eV transition from indirect to direct within the single layer.

3) Can you detail your work specifically on MoS2, you produce larger surface areas of this material, compared to flakes previously produced. This obviously makes it more desirable in production now, so what's the future of this, could it lead to a mono-layer revolution against graphene?

The major challenge is producing single atomic layers of MoS2.  Most researchers start with bulk MoS2 and then exfoliate and remove layers until they end with one.  This technique results in material in the form of flakes, typically only a few hundred square microns in area. The current challenge in the fabrication of MoS2 thin films is to form an industrially scalable and controllable deposition methodology which makes uniform thin films suitable for integration into optoelectronic devices. Unlike others who make MoS2 flakes, we are able to fabricate large sheets of MoS2 by chemical vapour deposition which grows the films from the bottom up.  Our technique also has the advantage of deposition at room temperature which is compatible with the conventional photolithography process.

MoS2 is a n-type semiconductor and it works perfectly with other p-type 2D materials such as WS2, WSe2. It addition, they could work alongside with graphene for 2D heterostructures.

2) Can you detail potential applications?

MoS2 is emerging for electronic applications in the transistor channel and graphene as contact electrodes and circuit interconnects. These high-performance large-scale devices and circuits based on this 2D heterostructure pave the way for practical flexible transparent electronics. In addition, MoS2 is being used as photodetectors, electroluminescent and biosensing devices too. 

In summary, Dr. Huang and his group have produced large sheets Molybdenum Di-Sulphide, through CVD (chemical vapour deposition) allowing them to grow sheets of this material of any size, and be able to tune its electronic properties. This has massive potential in industry (and research) for applications in nano-electronics. I'm fairly confident we’ll be reaping the benefits of research by Dr Huang and others in similar fields of research within the next couple of years.

Three Minute Thesis

So I found this on you tube, it's my 3MT presentation at the University of Southampton.

I talk about nano-scale devices and give some indication as to how small things are.

The Sound of Physics - Raman Spectroscopy

So funnily enough my PhD is in Raman spectroscopy and currently I'm in Jena at a conference on Raman Spectroscopy, so not too many brain cells were stretched when my first blog post is on Raman Spectorscopy.
If you ask anyone here at the conference explain Raman, they'll probably say something similar to me along the lines of
"Measurement of low energy excitations of molecular or crystalline systems, most commonly vibrational modes, by use of ineleastic scattering of light."
But that doesn't really help when explaining to someone who has no idea what any of that means, namely people with out a degree in physics. So how do I go about demystifying this and explaining the concept.

Well first off I'm going to say what Raman Spectroscopy does for us. As I'm sitting here I gather a real appreciation for the scale of the field, the technique is used widely in physics for looking at the structure of crystals, but also spans to biomedical research to characterise drugs and understand how the skin absorbs things.
So what is it?
Well Raman is a tool, a tool to look at the structure of things, everything essentially has a unique Raman fingerprint and using this technique we can identify the compositions and structure of a sample by understanding this finger print.

Let me elaborate on this thought, as I sit here tapping my finger on the wooden table I hear a sound, this is the result of my imparting energy to the table, energy transfers through the whole structure of the table and a sound is generated due to the vibrations, try it yourself, and you know the sounds, a solid 'thunk' if you heard it experience will tell you it's wood. Now the glass next to me, I tap that and the sound produced is much lighter, a ringing sound that lasts as the vibrations are dissipated through the glass. I'm sure you know this sound as well. In fact you can identify most things by the sound they make, and that is akin to Raman. Instead of hitting an object, we transfer energy using a laser, this produces vibrations and by looking at the 'spectra' we can identify the structure.

Uh-oh! Spectra....I've said something new, so now let's get physical.
After exciting our material with a laser and energy is transferred to the vibrations, the system then re emits the light, except it doesn't have the same energy, it can't, as some of it has been turned to vibrations. So it emits this light at a different energy to the incident energy.
If we count the photons of light emitted and compare them to the incident light energy then that difference must be the energy of the vibration.
There we go, Raman Spectroscopy in a nutshell.

So to review in a bit more physical way
When I get back to a computer I'll repost this with pictures and equations, but hope this helps.