Batteries have been in the news a lot recently, in part thanks to the work of Tesla, Inc. who have been grabbing headlines for various reasons over the last few years, including shooting a battery powered car into space (I’m sure they had a good reason, but space junk is already a problem…). More practically Tesla have also activated the world’s largest...

Batteries have been in the news a lot recently, in part thanks to the work of Tesla, Inc. who have been grabbing headlines for various reasons over the last few years, including shooting a battery powered car into space (I’m sure they had a good reason, but space junk is already a problem…). More practically Tesla have also activated the world’s largest...

In my recent work I’ve been making a carbon nitride material that produces mercury sulphide (HgS) nanoparticles as a side product. Although this ‘metacinnabar’ HgS is certainly toxic and definitely needs to be handled (and disposed of) with care, I was really surprised at the general nervousness of many trained scientists about going anywhere near it....

In my recent work I’ve been making a carbon nitride material that produces mercury sulphide (HgS) nanoparticles as a side product. Although this ‘metacinnabar’ HgS is certainly toxic and definitely needs to be handled (and disposed of) with care, I was really surprised at the general nervousness of many trained scientists about going anywhere near it....

In Science you don’t get too many opportunities to communicate your work to the general public, especially on a large scale.  If you’re lucky a paper you write might get mentioned in a magazine with a more general audience, but more often than not this audience is just a slightly less specific group of scientists or enthusiasts. Outreach programmes...

Three and a half years ago, when I moved to UCL after finishing my PhD, I hadn’t particularly considered my future options. I knew that I was interested in commercial science, so thought that I’d eventually move to industry after I gained more skills in applied research. Since then I’ve come to realise that although I do want to keep an industrial outlook...