Dancing in the sunlight: Light-responsive materials for drug delivery to energy storage

Speaker: Bea Jones, Department of Material Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge

Bea is undertaking a Bea is undertaking a joint PhD studentship with Beamline B21 at Diamond Light Source, Harwell, Oxfordshire. She is looking at light-responsive lyotropic liquid crystals formed using photoisomerisable surfactants for applications as solar thermal fuel materials, which can trap sunlight and release it as heat. As part of her work at Diamond, she is developing a sample environment to allow simultaneous, in–situ LED irradiation with small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) to track the self-assembly changes in her materials on isomerisation. Bea is also continuing her work forming nano-sized droplets of light-responsive lyotropic liquid crystals for applications in controlled release of drugs or catalysts.