Robert Woodward

We used confined polymerisation to create butterfly-wing-inspired nanostructures 🦋. Our fabrics were capable of 97% light absorption, 85% intrinsic photothermal efficiency, and also work in salty seawater!

Scalable Multifunctional Fabrics with Boosted Intrinsic Photothermal Efficiency for Salt‐Resistant Solar‐Driven Janus Evaporators Scalable nylon fabrics with bioinspired light-trapping nanostructures and 84.6% intrinsic photothermal conversion efficiency are developed for solar desalination. The Janus evaporator shows high evap...

📢 New paper in Advanced Science! We report low-cost fabrics for solar-driven interfacial evaporation. Just 1 m² of fabric can produce ~4 L of clean water per hour!💧

Thanks to Mingqing (our visiting CSC student) & her supervisor in Shanghai, Yaozu.

advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨 PhD opportunity 🚨

Join us in Vienna 🇦🇹 to develop porous polymer membranes for selective water purification.💧 Remove heavy metals, REEs & PFAS, and explore sustainable recovery. Apply by 31.03.2025 via the website below!

👉 circularbioengineering.at/jobs_program_1 (PhD 1.8)

Many of the old Imperial Chem Eng & Chemistry crew came. Was fun catching up after many years. Was almost like our group meetings years back.

Our International PaCE Xmas Symposium started 10 years, initiated by former group members. We finished the 9th edition early on Friday. Many thanks to the group members who organized, KY Lee for co-hosting, all who came, presented, asked questions, and contributed to an inspiring atmosphere - fun!

YouTube video by Universität Wien New Materials for a Sustainable Future 🌍🔄

Watch how we in the Cluster of Excellence Circular Bioengineering aim to change our future:
replacing non-renewables with circular materials that generate zero waste ♻️

Discover our vision for sustainable innovation www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VW6...

@bismarck-pace.bsky.social
@robbiewoody.bsky.social

YouTube video by Universität Wien New Materials for a Sustainable Future 🌍🔄

In this video Gunda Köllensperger and her colleagues at #univie @bismarck-pace.bsky.social ce.bsky.social, @juergenzanghellini.bsky.social & @robbiewoody.bsky.social explain how cutting-edge research is revolutionizing materials science to build a sustainable future.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VW6...

Yeah, to be fair you’ve peaked in mainstream media when they call you a boffin. The last sentence in the paper was 👨‍🍳👌 btw. Congrats again, mate!

Better than “Boffin”

Thanks Darren!

Hey Darren. Can @bismarck-pace.bsky.social and myself join the gang?

Calling all polymer scientists! Let’s re-find each other as people continue to migrate over!

Please tag people in the comments and share! I’ll continue updating as we find more people. #polymers

go.bsky.app/AgjxzFa

Just returned from the kick-off meeting of our EU funded DCDYNAMIC project. We had a great time in Manchester meeting our partners. Together, we are developing new high-voltage cables to connect offshore wind farms to the grid: dcdynamic.eu

The acid catalysts actually catalyse their own decline, which is sort of beautiful.
Check it out: pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

We saw a dramatic decline in catalyst performance upon recycling, which we thought was important to explore (Figure 2). The decline was attributed to the condensation of our benzyl alcohol substrate onto the surface of our catalysts.

In our latest work, we used sulfonated hypercrosslinked polymers as acid catalysts for esterification. We found a weird payoff - more acidic networks gave faster conversions while less acidic catalysts, although slower, gave much improved selectivities.

I’m pleasantly surprised at how many scientists have migrated here! 🧑‍🔬👨‍🔬

Heaviest of gaffs Vienna @robbiewoody.bsky.social