News

Winton Scholar, Michael Price, was announced winner of the Shell Future Energy Challenge Poster Competition.  The first prize of £250 was presented by Andy Brown, Shell Director of Upstream International, who gave the 2014 Shell Lecture ‘Deploying Gas Technology for a Sustainable Energy Future’ at St Catherine’s College on 22nd October 2014.Michael…

Work has begun for the Maxwell Centre that will be the centrepiece for “blue skies” research and industrial partnership in the physical sciences.  The groundbreaking celebration was held on 21st October, with the building on schedule to be completed in late 2015.  The new facility will offer laboratory and meeting spaces for more than 230 people.“T…

A new method for transferring energy from organic to inorganic semiconductors could boost the efficiency of widely used inorganic solar cells.The team, from the University of Cambridge, have successfully harvested the energy of triplet excitons, an excited electron state whose energy is harvested in solar cells, and transferred it from organic to i…

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London have devised a new simulation technique which reliably predicts the structure and behaviour of different materials, in order to accelerate the development of next-generation batteries for a wide range of applications.Using software to predict the characteristics of materials…

A new method which uses tightly confined light trapped between gold mirrors a billionth of a metre apart to watch molecules ‘dancing’ in real time could help researchers uncover many of the cell processes that are essential to all life, and how small changes to these processes can lead to diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s.Researchers from the …

Soapbox Science is an annual event that brings science to the people via the format of London Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner, which is historically an arena for public debate. With Soapbox Science, the UK’s top female scientists take to the streets to engage the general public with their latest discoveries, and to answer their science questions. The …

A breakthrough has been made in identifying the origin of superconductivity in high-temperature superconductors, which has puzzled researchers for the past three decades.Harnessing the enormous technological potential of high-temperature superconductors – which could be used in lossless electrical grids, next-generation supercomputers and levitatin…

Research in the solar energy community has always looked to natural photosynthetic systems for inspiration.  The study of hybrid systems, made up of natural biological systems and synthetic materials is interesting both as a basis for “proof of principle” device fabrication, but more importantly serves as a platform for further fundamental research…

The Winton Pump-prime scheme at the Cavendish Laboratory has been launched to encourage exploration of new innovate ideas with relevance to the broad field of Sustainability. This scheme is designed to promote speculative, high-risk activities that have the potential for major impact, which otherwise would be difficult to resource.  Following the l…

Research by Dr Alex Chin published in Nature Physics provides insight on coherent processes in pigment-protein complexesQuantum scale photosynthesis in biological systems, which inhabit extreme environments, could hold key to new designs for solar energy and nanoscale devices.Research performed by Winton Fellow Alex Chin with collaborators from the…

Research by Winton Scholar Miloš Knežević and Professor Mark Warner, proposes a new charge pump method to convert solar energy into electricityPhotoferroelectrics are materials in which their ferroelectricity, electric polarization, can be affected by exposure to light.  The proposed device works as a charge pump based on the photoferroelectric eff…

Latest research finds that the trailblazing ‘perovskite’ material used in solar cells can double up as a laser, strongly suggesting the astonishing efficiency levels already achieved in these cells is only part of the journey.Commercial silicon-based solar cells - such as those seen on the roofs of houses across the country - operate at about 20% e…

Researchers have been able to tune ‘coherence’ in organic nanostructures due to the surprise discovery of wavelike electrons in organic materials, revealing the key to generating ‘long-lived charges’ in organic solar cells - material that could revolutionise solar energy.By using an ultrafast camera, scientists say they have observed the very first…

New Winton Pump Prime Awards GrantedA further three Winton pump prime awards have been granted to academics in the Physics department, who will be using the funds to develop new areas of research.Solar energy harvesting and light scattering on polydomain nematic elastomersThe funding obtained by Professor Mark Warner will enable Professor Martin Čo…

Dr Nalin Patel has been appointed Manager of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability.  Nalin, who obtained his doctorate in Semiconductor Physics Group, previously worked with CDT and Toshiba Europe.  He started his post from 1 August 2011.