The Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication is pleased to host Dr Natalie Holmes as she presents her research on printable solar cells and biosensors.
Natalie is visiting the Centre through the ANN Short Term Travel Fund to gain access to MCN’s FIB-SEM capabilities – her talk will be preceded by an introduction to FIB-SEM.
Abstract: This talk will give an overview of polymer solar cell and electronic sensor research underway at the Centre for Organic Electronics. These research fields are attracting significant interest due to the low-cost, large-scale fabrication afforded by the polymer printing inks. Glucose biosensors and dehydration sensors present an attractive technology for the remote detection of biological analytes.
Polymer solar cells use the same semiconducting polymer materials and offer a competitive alternative to existing conventional solar cells. The cells are semitransparent, flexible devices able to be printed with similar manufacturing techniques to newspapers and labels. The development of nanoparticle colloidal inks presents an eco-friendly option that could be employed for large-scale polymer solar cell fabrication in the future.
Biography: Dr Natalie Holmes was awarded her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Newcastle in 2015, as an Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) scholar, where she was involved in the development of aqueous nanoparticle inks for the fabrication of organic solar cells. Her research investigated the structure-function relationships in these devices through the use of synchrotron-based X-ray microscopy, electron microscopy and spectroscopy, which led to the publication of several of the seminal articles in the emerging research field of nanoparticle organic solar cells.
Shortly after finishing her PhD, Natalie took up a Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate position at Karlstad University, Sweden before returning to Australia as a Research Associate at the Centre for Organic Electronics (COE), University of Newcastle in materials science, developing nano- and micro-structured functional polymeric materials for organic electronic sensor and solar cell applications.
