I am a final-year PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, investigating the optical and spin physics of light-emitting defects in 2D materials, jointly supervised by Prof. Mete Atatüre (Quantum Optical Materials and Systems Group) and Dr Sam Stranks (Materials and Device Spectroscopy Group). You can read about our demonstration of optically-active single spin defects in a 2D material at room temperature at Nature Communications (2022) and our most recent work on quantum coherence of these spin defects on Nature Materials (2024).
I was also based in these groups during my Master of Research at the EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2019-20), studying photo-dynamics of single-photon emission from defects in hexagonal boron nitride.
You can find me on Google Scholar and ResearchGate.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
I’m a chemical physicist by training, and I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to work on very different research projects in materials/nano science, each with its own flavour of physics and chemistry:
DNA nanotechnology and soft matter physics
During my MRes at the NanoDTC, I also carried out an eight-week project supervised by Dr Lorenzo di Michele in the Biological Soft Systems Group in the Department of Physics, studying how synthetic DNA receptors interact with lipid membranes. My results contributed to a publication in Nano Letters.
Functional electronic materials and organometallic chemistry
My Integrated Master’s thesis in the Robertson Group in the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (2018-19) focused on synthesising semiconducting iridium complexes and studying how their optical bandgap and piezoresistance related to the choice of ligand contained in the metal complex. You can find out more in our paper in Materials Advances.
Nano-photonics and 2D materials
I carried out a 12-month research placement (2017-18) in the Surface Photonics Group at Eindhoven University of Technology and the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research, under the supervision of Prof. Jaime Gomez Rivas. I studied exciton dynamics in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides, focusing on the preservation of their light-emitting properties on different substrates. My results were published in Advanced Optical Materials, and I also contributed to an article in ACS Photonics.
Polymer materials and synthesis
I undertook four summer internships (2013-16) investigating the polymerization kinetics, synthesis mechanisms, and morphological properties of polymeric materials and composites. These were carried out at the Basque Center for Materials, Nanostructures and Applications (Derio, Spain), and Polymat (Donostia, Spain). My contributions were published in Materials & Design and Langmuir.