̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - European Research Council

Spinning, twisted light could power next-generation electronics

sc604 — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:09:28 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Eindhoven ̽��ֱ�� of Technology, have created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays in television and smartphone screens, or power next-generation computing technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing.

̽��ֱ��semiconductor they developed emits circularly polarised light—meaning the light carries information about the ‘handedness’ of electrons. ̽��ֱ��internal structure of most inorganic semiconductors, like silicon, is symmetrical, meaning electrons move through them without any preferred direction.

However, in nature, molecules often have a chiral (left- or right-handed) structure: like human hands, chiral molecules are mirror images of one another. Chirality plays an important role in biological processes like DNA formation, but it is a difficult phenomenon to harness and control in electronics.

But by using molecular design tricks inspired by nature, the researchers created a chiral semiconductor by nudging stacks of semiconducting molecules to form ordered right-handed or left-handed spiral columns. Their results are reported in the journal Science.

One promising application for chiral semiconductors is in display technology. Current displays often waste a significant amount of energy due to the way screens filter light. ̽��ֱ��chiral semiconductor developed by the researchers naturally emits light in a way that could reduce these losses, making screens brighter and more energy-efficient.

“When I started working with organic semiconductors, many people doubted their potential, but now they dominate display technology,” said Professor Sir Richard Friend from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who co-led the research. “Unlike rigid inorganic semiconductors, molecular materials offer incredible flexibility—allowing us to design entirely new structures, like chiral LEDs. It’s like working with a Lego set with every kind of shape you can imagine, rather than just rectangular bricks.”

̽��ֱ��semiconductor is based on a material called triazatruxene (TAT) that self-assembles into a helical stack, allowing electrons to spiral along its structure, like the thread of a screw.

“When excited by blue or ultraviolet light, self-assembled TAT emits bright green light with strong circular polarisation—an effect that has been difficult to achieve in semiconductors until now,” said co-first author Marco Preuss, from the Eindhoven ̽��ֱ�� of Technology. “ ̽��ֱ��structure of TAT allows electrons to move efficiently while affecting how light is emitted.”

By modifying OLED fabrication techniques, the researchers successfully incorporated TAT into working circularly polarised OLEDs (CP-OLEDs). These devices showed record-breaking efficiency, brightness, and polarisation levels, making them the best of their kind.

“We’ve essentially reworked the standard recipe for making OLEDs like we have in our smartphones, allowing us to trap a chiral structure within a stable, non-crystallising matrix,” said co-first author Rituparno Chowdhury, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “This provides a practical way to create circularly polarised LEDs, something that has long eluded the field.”

̽��ֱ��work is part of a decades-long collaboration between Friend’s research group and the group of Professor Bert Meijer from the Eindhoven ̽��ֱ�� of Technology. “This is a real breakthrough in making a chiral semiconductor,” said Meijer. “By carefully designing the molecular structure, we’ve coupled the chirality of the structure to the motion of the electrons and that’s never been done at this level before.”

̽��ֱ��chiral semiconductors represent a step forward in the world of organic semiconductors, which now support an industry worth over $60 billion (about £45 billion). Beyond displays, this development also has implications for quantum computing and spintronics—a field of research that uses the spin, or inherent angular momentum, of electrons to store and process information, potentially leading to faster and more secure computing systems.

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Union’s Marie Curie Training Network and the European Research Council. Richard Friend is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Rituparno Chowdhury is a member of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Reference

Rituparno Chowdhury, Marco D Preuss et al. ‘Circularly polarized electroluminescence from chiral supramolecular semiconductor thin films.’ Science (2025). DOI:10.1126/science.adt3011

Researchers have advanced a decades-old challenge in the field of organic semiconductors, opening new possibilities for the future of electronics.

It’s like working with a Lego set with every kind of shape you can imagine, rather than just rectangular bricks

Richard Friend

Samarpita Sen, Rituparno Chowdhury

Confocal microscopy image of a chiral semiconductor

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Solar-powered device captures carbon dioxide from air to make sustainable fuel

sc604 — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, say their solar-powered reactor could be used to make fuel to power cars and planes, or the many chemicals and pharmaceuticals products we rely on. It could also be used to generate fuel in remote or off-grid locations.

Unlike most carbon capture technologies, the reactor developed by the Cambridge researchers does not require fossil-fuel-based power, or the transport and storage of carbon dioxide, but instead converts atmospheric CO2 into something useful using sunlight. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Energy.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been touted as a possible solution to the climate crisis, and has recently received £22bn in funding from the UK government. However, CCS is energy-intensive and there are concerns about the long-term safety of storing pressurised CO2 deep underground, although safety studies are currently being carried out.

“Aside from the expense and the energy intensity, CCS provides an excuse to carry on burning fossil fuels, which is what caused the climate crisis in the first place,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. “CCS is also a non-circular process, since the pressurised CO2 is, at best, stored underground indefinitely, where it’s of no use to anyone.”

“What if instead of pumping the carbon dioxide underground, we made something useful from it?” said first author Dr Sayan Kar from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. “CO2 is a harmful greenhouse gas, but it can also be turned into useful chemicals without contributing to global warming.”

̽��ֱ��focus of Reisner’s research group is the development of devices that convert waste, water and air into practical fuels and chemicals. These devices take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. ̽��ֱ��devices don’t use any outside power: no cables, no batteries – all they need is the power of the sun.

̽��ֱ��team’s newest system takes CO2 directly from the air and converts it into syngas: a key intermediate in the production of many chemicals and pharmaceuticals. ̽��ֱ��researchers say their approach, which does not require any transportation or storage, is much easier to scale up than earlier solar-powered devices.

̽��ֱ��device, a solar-powered flow reactor, uses specialised filters to grab CO2 from the air at night, like how a sponge soaks up water. When the sun comes out, the sunlight heats up the captured CO2, absorbing infrared radiation and a semiconductor powder absorbs the ultraviolet radiation to start a chemical reaction that converts the captured CO2 into solar syngas. A mirror on the reactor concentrates the sunlight, making the process more efficient.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently working on converting the solar syngas into liquid fuels, which could be used to power cars, planes and more – without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.

“If we made these devices at scale, they could solve two problems at once: removing CO2 from the atmosphere and creating a clean alternative to fossil fuels,” said Kar. “CO2 is seen as a harmful waste product, but it is also an opportunity.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say that a particularly promising opportunity is in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, where syngas can be converted into many of the products we rely on every day, without contributing to climate change. They are building a larger scale version of the reactor and hope to begin tests in the spring.

If scaled up, the researchers say their reactor could be used in a decentralised way, so that individuals could theoretically generate their own fuel, which would be useful in remote or off-grid locations.

“Instead of continuing to dig up and burn fossil fuels to produce the products we have come to rely on, we can get all the CO2 we need directly from the air and reuse it,” said Reisner. “We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it.”

̽��ֱ��technology is being commercialised with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Research Council, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Cambridge Trust. Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Sayan Kar et al. ‘Direct air capture of CO2 for solar fuels production in flow.’ Nature Energy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-025-01714-y

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.

Researchers have developed a reactor that pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel, using sunlight as the power source.

We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it

Erwin Reisner

Sayan Kar

Solar-powered flow reactor

Yes

Tiny copper ‘flowers’ bloom on artificial leaves for clean fuel production

sc604 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 09:28:45 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley, developed a practical way to make hydrocarbons – molecules made of carbon and hydrogen – powered solely by the sun.

̽��ֱ��device they developed combines a light absorbing ‘leaf’ made from a high-efficiency solar cell material called perovskite, with a copper nanoflower catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into useful molecules. Unlike most metal catalysts, which can only convert CO₂ into single-carbon molecules, the copper flowers enable the formation of more complex hydrocarbons with two carbon atoms, such as ethane and ethylene — key building blocks for liquid fuels, chemicals and plastics.

Almost all hydrocarbons currently stem from fossil fuels, but the method developed by the Cambridge-Berkeley team results in clean chemicals and fuels made from CO2, water and glycerol – a common organic compound – without any additional carbon emissions. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.

̽��ֱ��study builds on the team’s earlier work on artificial leaves, which take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. “We wanted to go beyond basic carbon dioxide reduction and produce more complex hydrocarbons, but that requires significantly more energy,” said Dr Virgil Andrei from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the study’s lead author.

Andrei, a Research Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, carried out the work as part of the Winton Cambridge-Kavli ENSI Exchange programme in the lab of Professor Peidong Yang at ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley.

By coupling a perovskite light absorber with the copper nanoflower catalyst, the team was able to produce more complex hydrocarbons. To further improve efficiency and overcome the energy limits of splitting water, the team added silicon nanowire electrodes that can oxidise glycerol instead. This new platform produces hydrocarbons much more effectively — 200 times better than earlier systems for splitting water and carbon dioxide.

̽��ֱ��reaction not only boosts CO₂ reduction performance, but also produces high-value chemicals such as glycerate, lactate, and formate, which have applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and chemical synthesis.

“Glycerol is typically considered waste, but here it plays a crucial role in improving the reaction rate,” said Andrei. “This demonstrates we can apply our platform to a wide range of chemical processes beyond just waste conversion. By carefully designing the catalyst’s surface area, we can influence what products we generate, making the process more selective.”

While current CO₂-to-hydrocarbon selectivity remains around 10%, the researchers are optimistic about improving catalyst design to increase efficiency. ̽��ֱ��team envisions applying their platform to even more complex organic reactions, opening doors for innovation in sustainable chemical production. With continued improvements, this research could accelerate the transition to a circular, carbon-neutral economy.

“This project is an excellent example of how global research partnerships can lead to impactful scientific advancements,” said Andrei. “By combining expertise from Cambridge and Berkeley, we’ve developed a system that may reshape the way we produce fuels and valuable chemicals sustainably.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, St John’s College, the US Department of Energy, the European Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Virgil Andrei et al. ‘Perovskite-driven solar C2 hydrocarbon synthesis from CO2.’ Nature Catalysis (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41929-025-01292-y

Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

Virgil Andrei

Solar fuel generator

Yes

Massive black hole in the early universe spotted taking a ‘nap’ after overeating

sc604 — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Like a bear gorging itself on salmon before hibernating for the winter, or a much-needed nap after Christmas dinner, this black hole has overeaten to the point that it is lying dormant in its host galaxy.

An international team of astronomers, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to detect this black hole in the early universe, just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

̽��ֱ��black hole is huge – 400 million times the mass of our Sun – making it one of the most massive black holes discovered by Webb at this point in the universe’s development. ̽��ֱ��black hole is so enormous that it makes up roughly 40% of the total mass of its host galaxy: in comparison, most black holes in the local universe are roughly 0.1% of their host galaxy mass.

However, despite its gigantic size, this black hole is eating, or accreting, the gas it needs to grow at a very low rate – about 100 times below its theoretical maximum limit – making it essentially dormant.

Such an over-massive black hole so early in the universe, but one that isn’t growing, challenges existing models of how black holes develop. However, the researchers say that the most likely scenario is that black holes go through short periods of ultra-fast growth, followed by long periods of dormancy. Their results are reported in the journal Nature.

When black holes are ‘napping’, they are far less luminous, making them more difficult to spot, even with highly sensitive telescopes such as Webb. Black holes cannot be directly observed, but instead they are detected by the tell-tale glow of a swirling accretion disc, which forms near the black hole’s edges. When black holes are actively growing, the gas in the accretion disc becomes extremely hot and starts to glow and radiate energy in the ultraviolet range.

“Even though this black hole is dormant, its enormous size made it possible for us to detect,” said lead author Ignas Juodžbalis from Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology. “Its dormant state allowed us to learn about the mass of the host galaxy as well. ̽��ֱ��early universe managed to produce some absolute monsters, even in relatively tiny galaxies.”

According to standard models, black holes form from the collapsed remnants of dead stars and accrete matter up to a predicted limit, known as the Eddington limit, where the pressure of radiation on matter overcomes the gravitational pull of the black hole. However, the sheer size of this black hole suggests that standard models may not adequately explain how these monsters form and grow.

“It’s possible that black holes are ‘born big’, which could explain why Webb has spotted huge black holes in the early universe,” said co-author Professor Roberto Maiolino, from the Kavli Institute and Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “But another possibility is they go through periods of hyperactivity, followed by long periods of dormancy.”

Working with colleagues from Italy, the Cambridge researchers conducted a range of computer simulations to model how this dormant black hole could have grown to such a massive size so early in the universe. They found that the most likely scenario is that black holes can exceed the Eddington limit for short periods, during which they grow very rapidly, followed by long periods of inactivity: the researchers say that black holes such as this one likely eat for five to ten million years, and sleep for about 100 million years.

“It sounds counterintuitive to explain a dormant black hole with periods of hyperactivity, but these short bursts allow it to grow quickly while spending most of its time napping,” said Maiolino.

Because the periods of dormancy are much longer than the periods of ultra-fast growth, it is in these periods that astronomers are most likely to detect black holes. “This was the first result I had as part of my PhD, and it took me a little while to appreciate just how remarkable it was,” said Juodžbalis. “It wasn’t until I started speaking with my colleagues on the theoretical side of astronomy that I was able to see the true significance of this black hole.”

Due to their low luminosities, dormant black holes are more challenging for astronomers to detect, but the researchers say this black hole is almost certainly the tip of a much larger iceberg, if black holes in the early universe spend most of their time in a dormant state.

“It’s likely that the vast majority of black holes out there are in this dormant state – I’m surprised we found this one, but I’m excited to think that there are so many more we could find,” said Maiolino.

̽��ֱ��observations were obtained as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Research Council and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Ignas Juodžbalis et al. ‘A dormant overmassive black hole in the early Universe.’ Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08210-5

Scientists have spotted a massive black hole in the early universe that is ‘napping’ after stuffing itself with too much food.

Jiarong Gu

Artist’s impression of a black hole during one of its short periods of rapid growth

Yes

How did the building blocks of life arrive on Earth?

sc604 — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Volatiles are elements or compounds that change into vapour at relatively low temperatures. They include the six most common elements found in living organisms, as well as water. ̽��ֱ��zinc found in meteorites has a unique composition, which can be used to identify the sources of Earth’s volatiles.

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Imperial College London, have previously found that Earth’s zinc came from different parts of our Solar System: about half came from beyond Jupiter and half originated closer to Earth.

“One of the most fundamental questions on the origin of life is where the materials we need for life to evolve came from,” said Dr Rayssa Martins from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “If we can understand how these materials came to be on Earth, it might give us clues to how life originated here, and how it might emerge elsewhere.”

Planetesimals are the main building blocks of rocky planets, such as Earth. These small bodies are formed through a process called accretion, where particles around a young star start to stick together, and form progressively larger bodies.

But not all planetesimals are made equal. ̽��ֱ��earliest planetesimals that formed in the Solar System were exposed to high levels of radioactivity, which caused them to melt and lose their volatiles. But some planetesimals formed after these sources of radioactivity were mostly extinct, which helped them survive the melting process and preserved more of their volatiles.

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, Martins and her colleagues looked at the different forms of zinc that arrived on Earth from these planetesimals. ̽��ֱ��researchers measured the zinc from a large sample of meteorites originating from different planetesimals and used this data to model how Earth got its zinc, by tracing the entire period of the Earth’s accretion, which took tens of millions of years.

Their results show that while these ‘melted’ planetesimals contributed about 70% of Earth’s overall mass, they only provided around 10% of its zinc.

According to the model, the rest of Earth’s zinc came from materials that didn’t melt and lose their volatile elements. Their findings suggest that unmelted, or ‘primitive’ materials were an essential source of volatiles for Earth.

“We know that the distance between a planet and its star is a determining factor in establishing the necessary conditions for that planet to sustain liquid water on its surface,” said Martins, the study’s lead author. “But our results show there’s no guarantee that planets incorporate the right materials to have enough water and other volatiles in the first place – regardless of their physical state.”

̽��ֱ��ability to trace elements through millions or even billions of years of evolution could be a vital tool in the search for life elsewhere, such as on Mars, or on planets outside our Solar System.

“Similar conditions and processes are also likely in other young planetary systems,” said Martins. “ ̽��ֱ��roles these different materials play in supplying volatiles is something we should keep in mind when looking for habitable planets elsewhere.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by Imperial College London, the European Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Rayssa Martins et al. ‘Primitive asteroids as a major source of terrestrial volatiles.’ Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado4121

Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. ̽��ֱ��results suggest that without ‘unmelted’ asteroids, there may not have been enough of these compounds on Earth for life to emerge.

Rayssa Martins/Ross Findlay

An iron meteorite from the core of a melted planetesimal (left) and a chondrite meteorite, derived from a ‘primitive’, unmelted planetesimal (right).

Yes

Early career researchers win major European funding

ta385 — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:30:00 +0000

Of 3,500 proposals reviewed by the ERC, only 14% were selected for funding – Cambridge has the highest number of grants of any UK institution.

ERC Starting Grants – totalling nearly €780 million – support cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and humanities.

̽��ֱ��awards help researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their most promising ideas. Starting Grants amount to €1.5 million per grant for a period of five years but additional funds can be made available.

In total, the grants are estimated to create 3,160 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and other staff at host institutions.

Cambridge’s recipients work in a wide range of fields including plant sciences, mathematics and medicine. They are among 494 laureates who will be leading projects at universities and research centres in 24 EU Member States and associated countries. This year, the UK has received grants for 50 projects, Germany 98, France 49, and the Netherlands 51.

Cambridge’s grant recipients for 2024 are:

Adrian Baez-Ortega (Dept. of Veterinary Medicine, Wellcome Sanger Institute) for Exploring the mechanisms of long-term tumour evolution and genomic instability in marine transmissible cancers

Claudia Bonfio (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology) for Lipid Diversity at the Onset of Life

Tom Gur (Dept. of Computer Science and Technology) for Sublinear Quantum Computation

Leonie Luginbuehl (Dept. of Plant Sciences) for Harnessing mechanisms for plant carbon delivery to symbiotic soil fungi for sustainable food production

Julian Sahasrabudhe (Dept. of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics) for High Dimensional Probability and Combinatorics

Richard Timms (Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease) for Deciphering the regulatory logic of the ubiquitin system

Hannah Übler (Dept. of Physics) for Active galactic nuclei and Population III stars in early galaxies

Julian Willis (Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry) for Studying viral protein-primed DNA replication to develop new gene editing technologies

Federica Gigante (Faculty of History) for Unveiling Networks: Slavery and the European Encounter with Islamic Material Culture (1580– 1700) – Grant hosted by the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford

Professor Sir John Aston FRS, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said:

“Many congratulations to the recipients of these awards which reflect the innovation and the vision of these outstanding investigators. We are fortunate to have many exceptional young researchers across a wide range of disciplines here in Cambridge and awards such as these highlight some of the amazing research taking place across the university. I wish this year’s recipients all the very best as they begin their new programmes and can’t wait to see the outcomes of their work.”

Iliana Ivanova, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said:

“ ̽��ֱ��European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. ̽��ֱ��new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges. In this call, I am happy to see one of the highest shares of female grantees to date, a trend that I hope will continue. Congratulations to all!”

President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said:

“Empowering researchers early on in their careers is at the heart of the mission of the ERC. I am particularly pleased to welcome UK researchers back to the ERC. They have been sorely missed over the past years. With fifty grants awarded to researchers based in the UK, this influx is good for the research community overall.”

Nine Cambridge researchers are among the latest recipients of highly competitive and prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants.

Luginbuehl lab

Plant roots interacting with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Image: Luginbuehl lab

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Soft, stretchy ‘jelly batteries’ inspired by electric eels

sc604 — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, took their inspiration from electric eels, which stun their prey with modified muscle cells called electrocytes.

Like electrocytes, the jelly-like materials developed by the Cambridge researchers have a layered structure, like sticky Lego, that makes them capable of delivering an electric current.

̽��ֱ��self-healing jelly batteries can stretch to over ten times their original length without affecting their conductivity – the first time that such stretchability and conductivity has been combined in a single material. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

̽��ֱ��jelly batteries are made from hydrogels: 3D networks of polymers that contain over 60% water. ̽��ֱ��polymers are held together by reversible on/off interactions that control the jelly’s mechanical properties.

̽��ֱ��ability to precisely control mechanical properties and mimic the characteristics of human tissue makes hydrogels ideal candidates for soft robotics and bioelectronics; however, they need to be both conductive and stretchy for such applications.

“It’s difficult to design a material that is both highly stretchable and highly conductive, since those two properties are normally at odds with one another,” said first author Stephen O’Neill, from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. “Typically, conductivity decreases when a material is stretched.”

“Normally, hydrogels are made of polymers that have a neutral charge, but if we charge them, they can become conductive,” said co-author Dr Jade McCune, also from the Department of Chemistry. “And by changing the salt component of each gel, we can make them sticky and squish them together in multiple layers, so we can build up a larger energy potential.”

Conventional electronics use rigid metallic materials with electrons as charge carriers, while the jelly batteries use ions to carry charge, like electric eels.

̽��ֱ��hydrogels stick strongly to each other because of reversible bonds that can form between the different layers, using barrel-shaped molecules called cucurbiturils that are like molecular handcuffs. ̽��ֱ��strong adhesion between layers provided by the molecular handcuffs allows for the jelly batteries to be stretched, without the layers coming apart and crucially, without any loss of conductivity.

̽��ֱ��properties of the jelly batteries make them promising for future use in biomedical implants, since they are soft and mould to human tissue. “We can customise the mechanical properties of the hydrogels so they match human tissue,” said Professor Oren Scherman, Director of the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, who led the research in collaboration with Professor George Malliaras from the Department of Engineering. “Since they contain no rigid components such as metal, a hydrogel implant would be much less likely to be rejected by the body or cause the build-up of scar tissue.”

In addition to their softness, the hydrogels are also surprisingly tough. They can withstand being squashed without permanently losing their original shape, and can self-heal when damaged.

̽��ֱ��researchers are planning future experiments to test the hydrogels in living organisms to assess their suitability for a range of medical applications.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the European Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Oren Scherman is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Stephen J.K. O’Neill et al. ‘Highly Stretchable Dynamic Hydrogels for Soft Multilayer Electronics.’ Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn5142

Researchers have developed soft, stretchable ‘jelly batteries’ that could be used for wearable devices or soft robotics, or even implanted in the brain to deliver drugs or treat conditions such as epilepsy.

Scherman Lab

Jelly batteries

Yes

Journeys of discovery: Steve Jackson and a life-saving cancer drug

lw355 — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 07:00:08 +0000

What excites Steve Jackson is understanding how biology works and why it sometimes goes wrong. But what galvanises him is knowing there are people alive today as a result of his discovery of how to create a cancer drug.