Lancaster University Chemistry Deaprtment were delighted tohost this annual Electrochemistry Northwest meeting. With thanks to our amazing planry speakers Prof Alison Parkin and Prof. Sub Reddy and all our speakers and poster presenter for the day.
Also delighted that two of our PhD students came away with poster prizes! Well done Brian and Eddie!
Congratulations to Mark for successfully passing his PhD viva with minor corrections. Mark's thesis demonstrates the proof of concept of decoupled electrochemical CO2 reduction.
Thank you to our examiners Prof Mark Symes and Dr John Fielden.
We report on the electrochemical propreties of functionalised isoindolinones. Notably, these are reversible redox species with extremely negative potentials of -2.8 V vs Fc! WE hope they will give us foundational molcules for future non-aquoues batteries derived from organic compounds.
With Impact Acceleration Award Funding from the EPSRC we are delighted to work on a brief collaboration with Carbon Bit Technologies to help overcome some of the practical challenges they are facing with their innovative eletrochemical CO2 capture system. Dr Hamza Annath will lead.
Congratulations to Sam for successfully passing his PhD viva with minor corrections. Sam's thesis explores the application of as-bought MXenes as electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction.
Thank you to our examiners Prof Ana Sobrido and Dr John Hardy.
We are delighted to welcome Eduardo Requena to the Toghill Group. Eddie will be exploring aqueous iron redox flow batteries as viable large scale energy storage.
We have two very different papers accepted into journals this month
Electrochemically decoupled reduction of CO2 to formate over a dispersed heterogeneous bismuth catalyst enabled via redox mediators -
Mark Potter, Daniel Smith, Craig Armstrong and Kathryn Toghill, EES Catalysis, 2024
An alkaline ferrocyanide non-enzymatic electrochemical sensor for creatinine detection
S Bajpai, GR Akien, KE Toghill, Electrochemistry Communications, 2024
Congratulations to the primary authors!
We are delighted to welcome Brian Lewis to the Toghill Group. Brian will be exploring aqueous organic redox flow batteries and in particualr the potential of redox boosted systems.
Congratulations to Beth for successfully passing her PhD viva with minor corrections. Beth gave an excellent defense of her thesis concerning sustainable electrode materials for Li ion batteries. We wish you the very best of luck for the future.
We are exploring the potential of our budding IP these next three months, as Sonal takes up the role of Entrepreneurial Lead to embark on intensive market exploration of the creatinine sensing world. Check out the emergence of CreaSense on Youtube and landing pages
Congratulations Sonal on succesfully defending your PhD thesis
Kathryn is taking some time away from the group as she welcomes baby Robbie to her family. Richard and Kass are proud parents and Arthur a very proud big brother :) See you in 6 months!
We're pleased to welcome Dr Hamza Annath and Dr Luis Pinho to the Toghill Group. Hamaza joins the DeCO-HVP ERC project looking into new catalytic materials for CO2 reduction, while Luis is joining the Dual Flow project developing materials to catalyse alkaline hydrogen evolution using redox mediators. They both bringa welath of experience in industry and research.
Our latest ERC funded grant, Dual Flow, starts this month! The Toghill Group is part of an exciting EIC Pathfinder consortium of European researchers and industry from Finland, Denmark, Ireland and the UK exploring a novel route to improving the value of green hydrogen by valorising the oxidation reaction with chemical synthesis.
We ended the month with our kick off meeting in Helsinki!
Great to be working with Micheal Scanlon and Pekka Peljo again. And great to meet new collaborators Kevin Lam (Greenwich University), Ander (DTU),
Kathryn has been promoted at Lancaster University to Professor of Sustainable Electrochemistry and Energy Materials. It is a wonderful privilege and honour to continue to grow my career at Lancaster University, to be integral in shaping the research directions of Materials Science Lancaster, Energy Lancaster and the Chemistry Department.
The UK RFB Network finally met again in person this july. Hosted by Queen Mary University London, Drs Ana Sobrido, Declan Bryans and Kathryn Toghill welcomed researchers from across the UK and abroad to discuss innovations in redox flow batteries. It was great to be able to network in person again, but also to maintain our international links with a hybrid meeting.
Craig and Mark have led a publication on their work on using iron dithiolene as an homogenous catalyst for CO2 reduction. The publication entitled "Exploring the Electrochemistry of Iron Dithiolene and Its Potential for Electrochemical Homogeneous Carbon Dioxide Reduction" was published in a special issue for Prof Hubert Girault. Congratulations all! This collaborative work was a long time coming with the pandemic getting in the way!
Find it here: https://doi.org/10.1002/celc.202200610
Kathryn was invited to give an in-person Keynote in Loughborough University for the SCI-Electrochemistry Postgraduate Conference. Her presentation was entitled "Energy Storage by Design" and concerned the design of molecules for redox flow batteries and energy storage in non-aqueous solvents.
Sonal Bajpai gave a great oral presentation
Sam and Mark both gave poster presentations on their CO2 work, with first prize going to Sam! Congratulations!!
Beth led on an invited commentary article in Joule. After scratching our heads about reference electrodes to best evaluate lithium ion battery potential windows, we found there to be quite the problem in the literature! Read our article "Misreported reference potentials in non-aqueous electrolytes: the battery endemic" to find out more and also for a handy list of recommendations and key literature!
Kathryn was invited to give an in-person talk at the Department of Chemistry in Birmingham University.
Her presentation was entitled "Energy Storage by Design" and concerned the design of molecules for redox flow batteries and energy storage in non-aqueous solvents.
This month we welcome a new PhD student, Victoria Thompson, and new PDRA Dr Daniel Smith.
Welcome to the group! Victoria will focus on developing sustainable and low cost chemistries for redox flow batteries, while Daniel joins us on the ERC CO2 reduction project. Already both are getting stuck in with the activities in Lancaster.
My first two PhD tudents have flown the nest <3
Dr Craig Armstrong has been a PDRA with us for the past two years, and has now moved to Swansea University to continue looking at electrochemical CO2 reduction.
Mr Dhruv Trivedi finalised his thesis this month and is awaiting his viva... In the meantime he has landed himself a job with Shimadzu as a North West Sales Rep and Consultant. Congratulations both!!
It has been an absolute joy workig with you both and growing this group together. You will always have a special place int he Toghill Group.
We bid farewell to Megan Pritchard in September, and were please to see she passed her MSc viva with minor corrections in November! Congratulations Megan. It was great working on iron RFBs with you for the past year! Good luck with your PhD on Nuclear Energy in Manchester.
Congratulations to Beth Murdock who has published a fantastic perspective review on the sustainability of lithium cathode materials in Advanced Energy Materials. Find it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/aenm.202102028
The iontronics Network from the Netherlands collaborates with UK RFB Network in the UK for a joint event on flow batteries in July. Kathryn also gave a didactic invited talk on Day 1 concerning the chemistry of redox species in RFBs.
We bid farewell to Dr Behnam Bastani who's time with us as a PDRA has come to an end. We still have some unfinished business though, and hope to keep collaborating on our outstanding publication on CO2 product analysis! It was great to be able to say farewell in person at least :)
Megan Pritchard joins us for an MSc by Research. Her project will explore iron complexes for low cost aqueous redox flow batteries. Croeso Megan a pob lwc! (we come from the same place in Wales ;D )
The paper work is complete and the Toghill Group are slowly getting back to the laboratory. We have a lot of ground to cover and are ready to go! For now at least, we get the lab to ourselves too!
Kathryn joined a long list of international researchers in electrochemistry and beyond in the Scanlon Seminar series online. Presenting on her work on non-aqueous redox flow batteries, Kathryn set out to outline the pros and cons of the field. The seminar series is now online at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZwmF5OUdS9emmGwRBwVXhQ
Kathryn hosts the Annual UK Redox Flow Battery Network meeting in a virtual conference. With the support of Craig Armsotring in house, and UK RFBN committee members, the meeting saw over 100 attendees from across the globe. See more about the meeting at the official website: https://sites.google.com/view/ukrfbnetwork/home
The Toghill Group has reached a new milestone! The first PhD student to graduate. Craig was grilled for three hours on his thesis entitled "Novel Non-Aqueous Symmetric Redox Materials for Redox Flow Battery Energy Storage" by examiners Prof Robert Dryfe (Manchester University) and DrJohn Griffin (Lancaster University), and came out a happy man with minor corrections. We are all VERY proud of our new doctor of philosophy!
The summer of 2019 has been one bearing the fruits of lots of flow battery work over the past year for the Toghill Group. Three manuscripts have been accepted as publications.
Work from our EPSRC First Grant "Dithiolene Complexes of First‐Row Transition Metals for Symmetric Nonaqueous Redox Flow Batteries" in ChemSusChem 12(19) 2019
An exploration of an all organic multielectron transfer compound as a flow battery redox mediator "Application of the dianion croconate violet for symmetric organic non-aqueous redox flow battery electrolytes" in J. Power Sources, 440, 2019, 227037
A very short review on metal coordination complexes as applied to non-aqueous flow batteries "Metal Coordination Complexes in Non-Aqueous Redox Flow Batteries" Current opinion in Electrochemistry, 2019
Well done to Craig and Ross for all this fantastic work!
We are welcoming a record three PhD students to the Toghill Group this year. Sam Robertshaw (Bangor and Cardiff University) and Callum Francis (Hull University) join the team on the ERC Starting Grant funding looking into novel CO2 reduction catalysts. While Beth Murdock (Lancaster University) joins the group with co-supervisor Dr Nuria Tapia-Ruiz to explore novel sustainable cathode materials for high voltage lithium ion batteries as part of the Material Social Futures Leverhulme Doctoral Training Centre. We also welcome Mark Potter as a final year MChem student to the group, exploring homogeneous catalysts for CO2 reduction.
After a successful application, Craig has been awarded a £5000 grant to visit École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Sion, Switzerland to conduct a three month research project. Entitled "The application of organic redox mediators in novel high energy density solid energy booster aqueous redox flow batteries", the project will form a collaboration between Dr Kathryn Toghill and Prof. Hubert Girault. The research on this grant will form the preliminary results for an FET Flagship H2020 grant currently in preparation at EPFL, which will involve Kathryn as the UK consortium member.
Kathryn has won a presitgious ERC Starting Grant of £1.3 million from the European Research Council. The grant will fund her research into an innovative appraoch towards electrochemical CO2 reduction. It is an incredicble boost for her career as a researcher, and Kathryn is indebted to the ERC for funding such blue skies research.
CO2Chem Seedcorn grants support to CO₂ utilisation research and development in the UK. Kathryn won funding of £5000.
MRes student Dhruv Trivedi gets his first Poster Prize and another in the bag for the Toghill Group courtesy of Alvatek UK. Dhruv's poster outlined our recent publication on formaldehyde determination at nickel modified electrodes.
After a lot of work by a number of project students over the past few years, we finally published this work! Well done Dhruv!!
The electrochemical determination of formaldehyde in aqueous media using nickel modified electrodes
D Trivedi, J Crosse, J Tanti, AJ Cass, KE Toghill, Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical 2018, 270, 298-303
Stability of molecular radicals in organic non-aqueous redox flow batteries: A mini review.
Craig Armstrong and Kathryn Toghill, Electrochem Comm 2018, 91, 19-24
Kathryn was invited to give a seminar on her research to the Chemistry Department at UCL. Was great to see the facilities there and to connect with Dr Katherine Holt.
Kathryn was invited to give a presentation on her research at the inaugural International Coalition for Energy Storage and Innovation (ICESI) held in Dalian, China. The meeting was a fantastic opportunity to meet and connect with leading flow battery and lithium ion researchers from across the globe. Special mentions to Prof Hubert Girault, Prof Fikile Brushett, Prof Susan Odom, and Prof Mike Aziz from the RFB community.
What a great day at the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) Christmas Conference in Lancaster University! Kathryn kicked off the Global Challenges themed conference representing the Chemistry Department with a talk on Energy Storage. While Craig presented his poster on his latest research to conference goers. Finally, the time came for the Dean's Awards, and our Craig was the deserving recipient of the 2nd Year prize for PhD Excellence.
Well done Craig, well-deserved!! And a first for the Chemistry Department too!!
In September Kathryn gave an interview regarding batteries and flow batteries to Science for the People. To listen to the whole show on Sound Cloud at the following link http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/episodes/batteries
Following her piece for The Conversation (found here) Kathryn was invited to join a Round Table discussion for TRT World (a Turkish International News Outlet) as an expert in batteries and stationary energy storage. Have a look to see how the discussion went went they were asked "Will Batteries Power the Future?".
Kathryn was recently invited to write an opinion piece for The Conversation regarding the government announcement of £246m into battery research. Kathryn collaborated with a colleague at Lancaster University, Denes Csala. The full article can be found here.
Craig recently attended the ECS NWSC meeting, held in the Stephenson institute for renewable energy, Liverpool University, and presented the group's first publication on Co(II) complexes for non-aqueous redox-flow batteries. In attendance were PhD students and academics from the universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster who presented talks and posters throughout the day. The program included a keynote presentation from guest speaker Prof. Charles W. Monroe on modelling lithium/oxygen batteries and a presentation from internal speaker Prof. Mathias Brust on charge transfer through Phospholipid bilayers via gold nanoparticles. In recognition of his presentation, Craig won the best-talk prize worth £100 from sponsors Alvatek.
Kathryn has been awarded here EPSRC First Grant award, to explore Complexes with Redox Non-Innocent Ligands for Redox Flow Battery Energy Storage. The award will allow for the appointment of a Postdoctoral Researcher, and for some key equipment in the group. This grant success will be a significant boost to the Toghill Group. Thank you EPSRC!
Kathryn is coordinating a new UK Redox Flow Battery Network supported by the recently established EPSRC Centre of Applied Materials for Integrated Energy Systems (CAM-IES) based in Cambridge, UK. The RFB Network aims to bring together flow battery researchers in academia and industry from across the UK in an environment conducive to sharing ideas, experience, and contacts.
The inaugural event is FREE and will take place on Monday, 26th June in Manchester from 10 - 18:00.
For more information, contact Kathryn and to register your attendance follow the link.
Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/uk-rfb-network-meeting-and-workshop-tickets-33592598366
Kathryn will be giving the Early Career Keynote lecture at the upcoming SCI Postgraduate Electrochemistry Conference in Southampton
The Toghill Group has had it's first paper accepted into Journal of Power Sources. The paper explores the use of cobalt-ligand complexes with tunable properties to maximise the solubility and potential window of the single species RFB. The article embodies Craig's research to-date: looking at the molecular enginnering of redox mediators for designer chemistry.