Find out about the School of Physics and Astronomy MSc programmes
The School of Physics and Astronomy Online Information Sessions will consist of presentations and Q&A sessions on the following days:
• Thursday 22nd February 2024 : Introduction to MSc Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences, 12:30-13:30 GMT
• Thursday 22nd February 2024: Introduction to MSc Mathematical Physics and MSc Theoretical Physics, 14:00-15:00 GMT
• Thursday 22nd February 2024: Introduction to MSc Particle and Nuclear Physics, 15:30-16:30 GMT
Come along to find out more about our programme structure and courses and meet our MSc Directors.
To book a place please fill our Booking Form.
Scientists unlock the potential of carbon nitrides, which have potential for technological advancements in fields such as materials science, electronics and optics.
Predictions
Ever since the seminal paper by Liu and Cohen in 1989, carbon nitrides have been a holy grail of materials science. Liu and Cohen's predictions of a fully saturated polymeric C3N4 solid with exceptional mechanical properties potentially surpassing diamond in hardness, fuelled years of research, yet no credible claims of such materials were reported.
Now, a multinational team of scientists, led by Dr Dominique Laniel from the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions of the University of Edinburgh, and including researchers from the University of Bayreuth (Germany) and the University of Linköping (Sweden), has finally achieved the unfulfilled promise of Liu and Cohen's vision.
Subject to extreme condition
The researchers subjected various carbon nitrogen precursors to incredibly high pressures between 70 and 135 gigapascals (GPa), with 100 GPa corresponding to 1,000,000 times the atmospheric pressure, combined with temperatures above 2000 K achieved in laser-heated diamond anvil cell experiments. The samples were then characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction at three particle accelerators, the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF, France), the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY, Germany) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS, United States). From these measurements, the synthesis of four carbon nitrides could be evidenced: oP8-CN, tI14-C3N4, hP126-C3N4, and tI24-CN2, featuring the necessary building blocks for ultra-incompressibility and superhardness, i.e. fully saturated C and N atoms, forming corner-sharing C(CN3) or CN4 tetrahedra. The crystal structure of these compounds are shown in the figure below. Remarkably, all four compounds can be recovered to ambient pressure and temperature.
Properties and applications
With experimental incompressibility between 365 and 419 GPa and calculated superhardness values between 78.0 and 86.8 GPa, these carbon-nitrogen compounds exceed the hardness of cubic boron nitride (c-BN) and closely approach that of diamond. Further calculations and experiments suggest additional remarkable properties, including photoluminescence, high energy density, piezoelectricity, and non-linear optical properties.
The potential applications of these ultraincompressible carbon nitrides are vast, positioning them as ultimate engineering materials akin to diamond. Their impact spans across numerous natural sciences fields, from materials science to electronics and optics, with use as high-endurance ‘smart’ cutting tools, protective coatings (e.g. for spaceships), and optoelectronic devices (e.g. solar cells and photodetectors).
The research team’s work has been published in Advanced Materials.
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Celebrating the successful launch and stunning first astronomical images produced by the Euclid satellite, sharing the science, and meeting the team behind the project.
Euclid Satellite
The European Space Agency’s flagship Euclid Dark Energy Satellite was launched on 1st July 2023 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies across more than a third of the sky. Its mission is to explore how dark energy and dark matter have shaped the evolution of our Universe.
Edinburgh input
Astronomers and developers from the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Astronomy are playing a leading role in work associated with the Euclid satellite, including defining its scientific goals, designing its observations, developing its data processing methods, hosting the UK’s Euclid Science Data Centre, and carrying out the scientific analysis.
Celebration event
To celebrate Euclid’s successful launch and to discuss the science behind its first astronomical images, the Edinburgh Euclid team held an event with scientists, politicians, local school pupils and media contacts.
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Congratulations to Professor Alexander Morozov who has received the 2023 Annual Award from The British Society of Rheology.
Professor Alexander Morozov has been awarded the 2023 British Society of Rheology Annual Award for his work on linear and nonlinear instabilities of elastic and viscoelastic fluids.
Professor Morozov is based in the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems. His research interests are in soft condensed matter, and include flow instabilities and the transition to turbulence in Newtonian and complex fluids, and active matter.
The British Society of Rheology is a charitable society which promotes the science and the dissemination of knowledge in the areas of pure and applied rheology.
The Annual Award recognises a significant contribution to rheology based on scientific merit. As award winner, Professor Morozov Alexander will present the Society’s award lecture which will be on ‘Elastic turbulence in parallel shear flows: Recent progress’.
Researchers from several universities have completed an innovative study which firmly links the structure of microgels, small networks of stimuli-responsive polymers, to the controlled release of liquid droplets coated in these particles. The discovery could revolutionise methods of targeting medicines to specific locations within the body.
Emulsions
Emulsions consist of numerous droplets that are present in a liquid without dissolving and mixing with the liquid. For example, milk consists of fat droplets stabilised by milk proteins that are dispersed in water. In many applications such as medicine delivery, it is important to not only maintain the droplet structure but also to be able to control when the droplets release their contents. This is because the encapsulated active ingredients in the droplet should only be released once the medicine has entered the body.
Microgels
In this study, researchers stabilised emulsions using temperature-sensitive microgel particles which form a thin protective shell around a droplet and adapt their shape to the ambient temperature. At room temperature, the microgel particles swell in water, but above 32°C, they shrink and the droplet is released into the surrounding liquid. Researchers have now revealed the underlying mechanism behind this process.
Understanding the mechanism
The team, which includes researchers from the University of Edinburgh, University of Gothenburg, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, ETH Zürich and the Osaka Institute of Technology, have revealed that the fundamental mechanism behind stimuli-responsive emulsions are morphological changes of the stabilizing microgels.
The stabilising microgels can be regarded as both particles and polymers. The particle character leads to a high stability of the emulsion, while the polymer character makes the microgels responsive to external influences leading to controlled release of the droplets. Achieving temperature-sensitive emulsions necessitates a delicate balance, requiring a minimal particle character for stability and a substantial polymer character for rapid and reliable release of the droplets.
Tailored emulsions
Pharmaceutical research on targeted medicines focuses on delivering medication in a higher concentration to specific diseased areas of the body rather than affecting the entire body, and responsive emulsions hold great potential for this.
Dr Marcel Rey, who worked at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh and recently moved to the University of Gothenburg, said:
Although additional research is needed, the future looks promising, and advancements can be expected over the next 10 years.
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Congratulations to Dr Tiffany Wood and School start-up Dyneval who received an Institute of Physics Business Start-Up Award.
Dyneval received an Institute of Physics (IOP) Business Start-Up Award for developing an innovative analyser for the precise measurement of semen quality to improve the efficiency of livestock production.
The IOP Awards recognise the achievements of individuals and teams in all aspects of physics. The Business Start-Up Award celebrates young companies with a great business idea founded on a physics invention, with the potential for business growth and significant societal impact.
Dyneval was founded in April 2020, with the Dynescan Semen Analyser launched in the veterinary sector in 2022, providing the first quality control standard for semen quality assessment that can be used by anyone across the livestock production industry.
The underlying technology is based on the application of advanced physics to extract parameters describing the swimming behaviour of microorganisms such as spermatozoa from the fluctuations in intensity of light passing through a sample.
The average UK dairy farmer is losing £37,000 per year due to the 20 per cent drop-in conception rates over the past 40 years. The Dynescan helps vets and farm technicians identify poorly motile and damaged semen before use and thereby improve conception rates to improve the profitability of farming while reducing the environmental impact of protein production from livestock.
Longer-term, the team at Dyneval plan to strengthen commercial opportunities and export abroad to generate new datasets concerning male livestock fertility at a global level to guide data-driven decisions for sustainable outcomes.
Congratulations to Max Huisman and Giorgia Palombo who received prizes for their posters at the International Soft Matter Conference 2023.
Based in the Soft Matter Physics team at the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, both Max Huisman and Giorgia Palombo are in year 3 of their PhD. Max’s research is on the influence of polymers on water evaporation, specifically related to the evaporation of respiratory droplets and virus transmission, and created a poster titled ‘Humidity insensitive evaporation of concentrated polymer solutions’. Giorgia’s research centres around designing and characterising active DNA-based hydrogels with modulable viscoelastic properties through the use of proteins, and her poster was titled 'Protein-Functionalised DNA Nanostar Hydrogels’.
The International Soft Matter Conference brings together researchers to exchange ideas, initiate discussions and report on results relating to soft matter physics. A team of Edinburgh researchers travelled to Japan for the 2023 event.
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Congratulations to Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu who has secured funding and a visiting fellowship to pursue collaborations in nuclear astrophysics.
Dr Sidhu's research is situated within the realm of experimental nuclear astrophysics, focusing on the investigation of nuclear reactions transpiring within stars. He is particularly intrigued by the complex processes involved in the synthesis of chemical elements across diverse stellar environments, ranging from quiescent stars like our Sun to dynamic events like novae, supernovae, and X-ray bursts.
To explore these phenomena, he conducts experiments at international laboratories, including GSI/FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research) in Germany, HZDR (Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf) in Germany, LNGS (Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso) in Italy, and ANL (Argonne National Laboratory) in the United States.
This visiting fellowship will now take him to the University of Notra Dame, USA, where he will collaborate with researchers in this field.
The fellowship is supported and funded by the International Research Network for Nuclear Astrophysics (IReNA) and The Royal Society. The IReNA connects interdisciplinary research networks to foster collaboration, complement and enhance research capabilities and accelerate progress in science. The Royal Society International Exchange awards support scientists based in the UK in collaborations with leading scientists overseas.
Congratulations to Dr Patrick Pietzonka who has received recognition for his work in stochastic thermodynamics.
Dr Patrick Pietzonka has been awarded the 2023 European Physical Society’s Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Division Early Career Researcher Prize for his work in stochastic thermodynamics.
Patrick is a newly appointed lecturer in the Soft Matter, Statistical and Biological Physics Group of the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems. He was previously based at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden.
His research interests are in the statistical physics of systems driven far from equilibrium and subject to thermal noise. Patrick's goal is to find general physical laws that underlie living systems and more generally ‘active matter’.
The European Physical Society works to promote the advancement of physics and is organised through a number of divisions and groups. The Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Division represents and provides a forum for scientists interested in statistical and nonlinear physics, complex systems and interdisciplinary applications.
An art installation based on Edinburgh-led research is to feature in a major exhibition that challenges established ideals of beauty.
Renaissance cosmetics
Soft matter physicist, Prof Wilson Poon and art historian, Prof Jill Burke have been working together to learn about the history and science of Renaissance cosmetics.
Both researchers are interested in thinking about cosmetics as ‘goo’, or ‘liquids with bits’ – substances that are neither completely solid nor completely liquid.
Professor Burke said:
The way materials flow – for example how a skin cream might spread on the skin – affects how they are made, stored and dispensed.
Professor Poon added:
These flow properties are of key importance for the formulation of skin and hair care products now, just as it was in the Renaissance.
Multi-sensory installation
As a result of their collaboration, they have developed The Beauty Sensorium - a multi-sensory commission where visitors can enter the world of Renaissance cosmetics, hair and skincare. The exhibition shows how Renaissance cosmetic makers wrestled with many of the same technical challenges as modern soft matter scientists.
The Beauty Sensorium will include five cosmetic samples of varying textures and viscosities, made from ingredients including mutton fat, mastic gum and rose water. These will be presented in lit glass vessels that will highlight the life of the substance within, how it moves and transforms when animated by stirring or heat. Visitors will catch fragrances of each substance as they walk around the installation and hear the sounds made during their preparation. The substances demonstrate that much of our scientific knowledge is acquired through first-hand, sensory experiences.
Home scientists
Professor Burke and Professor Poon are trialling historical recipes that may provide insights for beauty products today. Both hope that the project will inspire people to recreate the recipes themselves and become scientists in their own kitchens.
A video featuring Professor Burke and Dr Andreia Fonseca da Silva, a research fellow from the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership who formulated the cosmetic samples on show, will feature as part of the exhibition and highlight the commonalities – and differences – of inventiveness in the lab and at home.
The Cult of Beauty
The Beauty Sensorium commission has been created for The Cult of Beauty exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London which runs from 26 October to 28 April 2024. The show examines how morality, status and health have shaped ideas about beauty throughout history, and it encourages visitors to foster dialogue, reflection and more inclusive definitions of beauty.
The installation has been developed as part of the Renaissance Goo project, funded by an APEX grant from the Royal Society.