New Collaboration: Multimodal Ion Beam Imaging facility

We are excited to announce a new collaboration with The Surrey Ion Beam Centre on a new £3m project ‘Multimodal 3D elemental and molecular imaging at the sub-micron scalefunded by the EPSRC.  The project, led by Prof Melanie Bailey at the University of Surrey, will be achieved.by combining MeV ion beam analysis (X rays, gamma rays, backscattered particles) and water cluster Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) for the first time in a single instrument.

Happy 80th John!

We recently got together with some alumni and friends of the group to celebrate John Vickerman’s 80th Birthday with a meal and drinks in Manchester city centre.  It was great to catch up with everyone. Congratulations John!

 

Welcome Akhila

Akhila’s PhD project will explore the novel application of mass spectrometry imaging technologies to measure improved uptake, distribution and metabolism of crop protection products in leaves and plants, addressing global challenges in food security. The project is co-funded with Syngenta and the BBSRC.

Welcome Abdulrhman

The world urgently needs better battery technology to rapidly move towards a low‐carbon society. However, commercially‐available batteries currently do not store enough energy, have limited working lifetimes, and are too expensive to make large‐scale electrification viable. To design improved batteries, a better understand of chemical processes inside a battery during charging and discharging is needed. This requires measuring the flow of ions and electrons across multiple interfaces, buried within the battery. Abdulrhman’s PhD project will develop methodologies to study these interfaces using secondary ion mass spectrometry and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy.  The project is co-supervised by Dr Alex Walton.