Yunchu Sun is our FUSE intern joining the group for the Summer. Yunchu will be studying the dissolution properties of the solid electrolyte interphase in sodium-ion batteries using scanning electrochemical microscopy. Welcome!

We are running two Faraday Institution FUSE Internships with our group based at Imperial College London.

These internships will run for 8 weeks over Summer 2023.

We look forward to welcoming the successful applicants to the group.

Welcome Hannah. Hannah Lynn is joining the group here at Imperial from Lancaster University to study Ni and Mn disordered rocksalt cathode materials for Li-ion batteries.

We are pleased to announce that from 1st November 2022 the Tapia Ruiz Group will be based at Imperial College, London.

Nuria has accepted a new position as Senior Lecturer and the group and lab will be relocated to Imperial’s White City campus.

For more information on the Chemistry Department at Imperial, click here.

We welcome Hengyi Zhang to the Group. Hengyi is joining us from Oxford University as a FUSE Intern for 8 weeks over Summer. She will be working on the project 'From ground waste to batteries: using Prussian Blue from remediated ground waste as cathode material for sodium-ion batteries'.

Alistore meetings have now resumed after covid restrictions, and in June Nuria attended the biannual Alistore (European Research Institute) meeting in Juelich, Germany.

Beth Murdock, a PhD from our group had the great opportunity talk at the 241st Electrochemical Society Meeting in Vancouver, Canada. The title of Beth's talk was 'The Correlation Between Surface and Performance in Doped LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4.

We welcome Adam Rowling to the Group. Adam started his PhD in October 2021, on a novel family of microporous carbon called OSPC, which has shown promise as an alternative electrode material to graphite.

During March and April, several group members travelled to Germany to work at the Helmholtz-Zentrum in Berlin. 

Sarah, Beth and Bego carried out hard XAS experiments on the KMC2 beamline and soft XAS experiments on the RGBL Dipole beamline.

We will be running a Faraday Institution FUSE Internship over 8 weeks during Summer 2022. We look forward to welcoming the successful applicant.

After a break last year, the Group were able to celebrate Christmas together with dinner at the Merchants in Lancaster.
From left to right, Beth, Sara, Sarah, Mangai, Bego, Joel, Laura, Nuria, Li, Harald, Alexandra, Bin, Jack and Jake.

Welcome to our new PDRA Jake Entwistle, who joins us from Sheffield University.
Jake will be working on the Innovate UK HYPERCARB project alongside industrial partners Deregallera and CPI. His work is focused on high-capacity hard carbon composite materials. This project aims to synthesize these materials at a large scale and produce commercially relevant pouch cells. 

The Tapia-Ruiz Group had lunch together to mark the start of the new academic year, we were also joined by some of John Griffin's group. 

We welcomed new arrivals Chris and Bin. In the photo from left to right: Harald, Nuria, Sarah, Joel, Mangai, Bego, John, Jack, Bin, Chris and Laura.

Our PhD student Beth and Research Associate Sara visited Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron in Didcot. They used the i09 beamline to carry out Hard X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (HAXPES). They were the first to use the facilities in a long time and we’re excited to be able to visit again now restrictions have lifted.

We welcome our new PDRA Bin Wang, joining us from the University of Manchester to work with us on The Faraday Institute's FutureCat project. 

We are excited to be back in the lab at a reduced capacity. We have introduced safety measures such as social distancing and wearing of masks to ensure that we can work safely.

Nuria has been promoted to Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University. Congratulations from the rest of the Group!

Li's project will be focused on the fundamental understanding of high-voltage spinel materials. Li will be working on The Faraday Institute's FutureCat Project (https://faraday.ac.uk, https://futurecat.ac.uk).  

The first NEXGENNA International Symposium on Na-ion battery technology was organised by Lancaster University. We gathered academics from international institutions, NEXGENNA partners and industry members together in a 2-day workshop with talks from leaders in their respective fields of Na-ion research.

Nuria attends the biannual Alistore (European Research Institute) meeting in Castelldefels, Barcelona.

Christmas dinner with John Griffin's group. In the picture from left to right: Sara, Tommy, Valerie, Dr John Griffin, Beth, Mangai, Luca, Colly, Alexandra, Nuria and Cindy.

Nuria presents the NEXGENNA project on Na-ion batteries at the Phase-2 Project kick-off meeting, with Dr. Rob Armstrong and Prof. John Irvine from the University of St. Andrews.

Another experiment was carried out at DLS! Members of the Tapia-Ruiz Group went to Didcot to measure operando XANES data on some materials using the B18 beamline.

We welcome back a former masters student in our group, Beth Murdock and have a new addition to the group, Alexandra Michail. Both will be embarking upon their PhD journey.

Our group will be working on two projects that will focus on the study of new Li-ion and Na-ion battery materials. Nuria is the Lancaster lead on the NEXGENNA and FutureCat projects, funded by The Faraday Institute.

Night out at Marco's to celebrate new PhD arrivals. In the picture from left to right: Mangai, Cindy, Beth, Alexandra, Nuria and Colly.

The Tapia-Ruiz group travels to the ALBA Synchrotron to collect operando X-ray diffraction data of dichalcogenide electrodes on BL04.

Nuria was invited to present some of the Group's most recent work at UKES, which was held at Newcastle University.