Students complete 2 Mini projects of 8 weeks duration and one Midi project of 12 weeks duration during their first year. These projects are designed to help expand the research horizons of students, before they decide on their PhD topic. The Midi project is normally expected to continue on into a PhD.
Mini Projects
The Mini projects are 8 weeks in length (Nov – Jan and Feb – Apr) and run alongside other courses that students take during their MRes year. These projects give students an exposure to day-to-day research environments, and also help them explore new research areas that they have not worked in previously.
Midi Project
The Midi project is 12 weeks (May – Jul) and helps students test the ground with their PhD topic, supervisor, and research group before committing to doing their PhD in that area. Most students tend to continue on from their Midi to PhD in the same group.
PhD Project Topics
Throughout their first year, students speak to potential PhD supervisors from around the University to help identify and explore a PhD project that fits their interests and NanoDTC research themes as well as other requirements. This process is facilitated by the NanoDTC through the release of PhD project expressions of interest and opportunities to meet thereafter with people from different groups, including eligible supervisors as part of the programme (Nov-Jan).
The choice of PhD projects is made around April. These proposals are all vetted by the NanoDTC External Advisory Board for ambition, risk, and fit to NanoDTC themes before students choose one project in which they are most interested.
Students then flesh out their chosen PhD project proposal and defend it in front of a viva panel in July before embarking on their PhD in September. Brief descriptions of the PhD projects undertaken by our students are included below.

Optical Metamaterials made by Self-Assembly
Creating new optical properties from self-stacking nanostructures So what is a Metamaterial?! Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties not readily available in nature.

The next great detective story: using nanosensors for early cancer detection
The hardest part about detecting cancer is that the disease emerges from our own tissues. The detectives in the clinic, the doctors, have a difficult

Upgrading Biology: Building Better than Nature
Everything in Nature is made from just 20 different amino acid building blocks; imagine what you could do with 200. Proteins define Biology and set

Looking inside lithium-ion batteries
Alice Merryweather (c2018) is the lead author on a paper published in the journal Nature, reporting an a new optical technique called interferometric scattering microscopy

40 new EPSRC studentships for NanoDTC
We are pleased to announce that EPSRC have awarded a new Nano CDT grant of 40 studentships for training the next generation of interdisciplinary innovative

3D printing going nano
Devices for printing 3 dimensional objects, called 3D printers, have received a lot of public and scientific attention in the past few decades. They are

Colour from Nothing
Most colours we see, with the exception of coloured lights like neons or televisions, are produced by dyes: molecules and materials which absorb some colours

Opening a Window to Sunlight
The price of producing electricity from sunlight has been falling dramatically over the past three decades, but a push towards more efficient devices is still

From waste to fuel: quantifying sustainability
Taylor Uekert (c2016) and co-authors highlight key steps for taking a solar waste-to-hydrogen technology from the lab to the real world. With 70% of global

Jelly solar cells
Solar cells are traditionally made from high purity semiconductor materials, such as silicon. Their production requires high temperatures and ultra-clean environments, which makes them expensive. The resulting structure of the material is extremely ordered and rigid. A novel class of solar cell materials has recently been discovered. These materials are called hybrid perovskites. They have the same efficiency for converting light into electricity as the traditional semiconductors, but do not rely on the same expensive production process. This favourable combination has attracted many scientists to this material over the past decade.

Bacteria: Enemy or Hero?
The world is facing a global energy crisis as CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to increase at an alarming rate. What if CO2 could be converted

The power of soft connections: next-generation neural interfaces
Designing electrical components with mechanical softness in mind can move us closer to direct brain-machine communication. The ability to connect computer hardware with the human

Between Light and Matter
The global demand for energy is increasing with every year. If we do not want to rely on burning limited fossil fuels that emit greenhouse

Navigating hyper-dimentional voltage space
My research involves developing an algorithm to automatically tune a 2xN array of quantum dots (QDs) that could be used as the building block for

Singlet Fission Luminescent Solar Concentrators
Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon
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- c2017
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- c2019

Watching what happens inside working batteries

A new way for brain cancer treatment

Shining light on green hydrogen

Trapping liquids in a sponge

Capturing the Energy of Individual Electrons

From waste to hydrogen

From waste to fuel: quantifying sustainability

Controlling the uncontrollable

Quantum computers with industry-standard silicon technology

Materials for motion

Jelly solar cells

The future is bright for generating new light

Targeting the cure for Tuberculosis: Solid-state nanopore sensing

Photoswitches with ultra-fast response times

Life from scratch

Spectroscopy and Electrocatalysis for a Sustainable Future

Cages for the Future – A caravan for molecules is on its way

A new spin on electronics

Batteries to power a sustainable future

Catching sunbeams

The Adventures of Ellie the Electron

Making quantum fly – with microwaves

Low power memory devices

Brain navigation: connecting the eyes to the brain

The coolest infrared sensor in the Universe

Seeing is believing

Lipids: The Missing Key to the Parkinson’s Puzzle?

Treating cancer using surfaces, light and gold

Making a sustainable future more colourful

Smart surfaces for heating and cooling buildings using only sunlight

Nanorobots – not who you think they are

Functional Nanoelectronics and Quantum Materials

Stacking a market stall with fruit with hands 10,000 times the size!

Flipping spins to boost the efficiency of LEDs

What if you could see magnetism?

Making batteries ring

Using light to make chemistry more environmentally friendly

Navigating hyper-dimentional voltage space

Nano-structuring of battery electrode

Trapping light to open up our universe

The studies of battery degradation under the microscope

Solar cells through the Looking Glass of electrons

Radically different organic energy materials
