News
7th July, 2017
Farewell drinks for Rongtan in Hyde Park. Rongtan is leaving us back to Peking University. We wish him all the best!
3rd July, 2017 Undergraduate researchers
Chemical Engineering undergraduate students joined our group! Left to Right: Haoran Xiong (IC Chem Eng), Hassan Azzan (IC Chem Eng), and Zifeng Song (Tsinghua Chem Eng).
Papers published
5th June, 2017 Two papers published today!
We just had two collaborative papers published online today. One paper on oriented 2D porous organic cage crystals was published in Angewandte Chemie, in collaboration with Prof. Andy Cooper in University of Liverpool. Check out the paper here
Another paper on highly permeable and selective microporous PIM-1/MOF composite membranes was published in Nature Energy, in collaboration with Prof. Easan Sivaniah at Kyoto University (my PhD advisor in Cambridge) and other institutions.
Check out the news release from the department.
PhD Scholarships
31st May, 2017 Three PhD students starting soon!!!
Congratulations to Rui Tan from Peking University on award of a prestigious full PhD scholarship funded by the China Scholarship Council. Rui will join the group in October 2017 working on redox flow battery and solid state battery, under co-supervison of Dr Qilei Song and Prof. Nigel Brandon.
Congratulations to Anqi Wang on the offer of Department PhD scholarship! Anqi will stay working on synthesis of microporous polymer membranes and energy applications.
Congratulations to Anthony Houghton on the offer of a DTP PhD scholarship! Anthony will work on design and synthesis of functional microporous materials including MOFs.
Undergraduate Students Research Award
20th April, 2017
Azzan Hassan, 2nd year UG student in the department, was offered the Faculty of Engineering UROP Award for an 8 week UROP summer placement. Zifeng Song, final year UG student in Department of Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University, was awarded the Faculty of Engineering International Research Opportunities Programme (IROP) award for 8 week summer research project. Look forward to working with you in July.
4th April, 2017
Rongtan Gao joined our group as a visiting student. Rongtan Gao is from the group of Prof. Feng Pan, School of Advanced Materials, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, China. Rongtan is now visiting our group working on functional materials and redox flow batteries for energy storage applications. Welcome!
27th-29th March 2017
Dr Song attended the ChemEngDay UK 2017 conference and gave a talk on Functional Microporous Membranes for Energy and Environmental Applications. He also attended the UK Particle Technology Forum held by the University of Birmingham on behalf of IChemE Particle Technology Special Interest Group (PTSIG), on the 29th March, and gave a Keynote talk titled: Particle Technology: a personal journey towards interdisciplinary materials research.
March 2017 - PhD studentships for home students
The Department of Chemical Engineering has available 5 fully-funded Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) Scholarships for outstanding PhD applicants qualifying as Home students to start in October 2017.
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/chemical-engineering/opportunities/vacancies/
March 2017
Group photo in March 2017, including co-supervised PhD students, MSc students, and collaborators. We are still looking for motivated and talented PhD students!
From left to right: Dr Qilei Song, Anqi Wang, Clemens Patzschke (PhD with Prof. Paul Fennell), Tianhe Zhang, Barbara Primera Darwich, Dewang Zeng (PhD), and Dr Liya Zheng (PDRA with Prof. Fennell).
March 2017
Our lab in Bone building B326 has been refurbished into a brand new materials chemistry & energy research lab, where we work on materials synthesis and processing, membrane and battery fabrication, and performance testing. The other lab B221 is currently being refurbished as well.
February 2017
Dr Song was awarded the IChemE Nicklin Medal for his outstanding contribution to developing the next-generation of microporous membrane materials. Imperial News. Deepest thanks go to supervisors, mentors, collaborators, colleagues, and the support of a number of labs and departments.
January, 2017
Dr Song visited several leading universities in China, including the University of Science and Technlogy of China, Southeast University, Tianjin Univbersity, Nankai University, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, and Tsinghua University.
November, 2016
Barbara, Anqi, and Tianhe joined the group to work on their MSc research projects. Welcome!
Launch of the Barrer Centre, 10th October 2016
The Barrer Centre at Imperial was launched on the 10th October 2016, which aims to develop breakthrough materials for separation technologies for applications in more energy-efficient and environemntal-friendly separation processes in industry. Our group is a part of the Centre.
We were very pleased to have a range of attendees in our launch event, including high-profile policy-makers, world-leading acadamics, industrialists and experts in global separations. A keynote inaugural Barrer Lecture on “The Development of the Membrane Separation Industry” was delivered by Richard Baker, Founder and Principal Scientist at Membrane Technology and Research Inc, USA and Chair of the Barrer Centre.
September 2016
Congratulations to Xiaoqi, Qiao, and Nan for successfully completing their MSc projects. Well done!!
August 2016
Dr Song started his new job as a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering in the Department. A new journey, very different challenges!
June 2016
Nanofilm membranes reported in news by Materials Research Society (MRS).
Nanofilm-based membranes boost molecular separations in organic systems
http://www.materials360online.com/newsDetails/62317
Image below shows the structure of porous polymer. Credit: Kim E. Jelfs, Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London
10th May, 2016
Glovebox workstation installed! Time to start making batteries and research on energy conversion and storage.
2nd May 2016
Our latest paper published in Nature Materials, reporting a novel molecular design approach to synthesis of ultrathin and microporous polymer membranes, using sterically contorted monomers, to achieve enhanced performance for solvent-based separations.
Maria Jimenez-Solomon+, Qilei Song+, Kim Jelfs, Marta Munoz-Ibanez, Andrew Livingston*. Polymer nanofilms with enhanced microporosity by interfacial polymerisation. Nature Materials. 2016. Doi:10.1038/nmat4638. (+Contributed equally).
Researchers develop "designer" chemical separation membranes
December 2015
Our paper accepted in Advanced Materials.
Q. Song, S. Jiang, T. Hasell, M. Liu, S. Sun, A.K. Cheetham, E. Sivaniah, A.I. Cooper. Porous Organic Cage Thin Films and Molecular-Sieving Membranes.Advanced Materials. 2016, DOI: 10.1002/adma.201505688. Back Cover (Image credit: Adam Kewley).
November 2015
Paper accepted in Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Qilei Song, Shuai Cao, Robyn Pritchard, Hazim Qiblawey, Eugene Terentjev, Anthony K. Cheetham and Easan Sivaniah. Nanofiller-tuned microporous polymer molecular sieves for energy and environmental processes. Journal of Materials Chemistry A. 2016. DOI: 10.1039/C5TA09060A
October 2015
Dr Song gave a seminar on Functional Nanomaterials for Energy and Sustainability at the Energy Futures Lab on Friday 30th. Link
The group welcomes new members!
Arthie Nimalan and Ayshah Sawjani are final year undergraduate students working together on porous membranes for molecular separations, co-supervised by Prof. Livingston.
MSc students:
Qiao Zhang will be working on Polymer Membranes of Intrinsic Microporosity for Molecular Separations, co-supervised by Prof. Livingston.
Xiaoqi Li will be working on synthesis and electrochemical characterisation of functional nanomaterials for energy conversion and storage.
Nan Ding will be working on synthesis and applications of layered double hydroxides and derived nanostructured metal oxides, co-supervised by Dr Fennell.
September 2015
23rd September. Dr. Song gave a short talk at the department postdoc symposium.
15th September. Congratulations to Horace KH Chien on successfully completing his MSc project. Horace did some nice work on synthesis of LDHs and mixed metal oxides for applications in chemical looping processes.
August 2015
Dr Song was awarded a Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Travel Grant for attending the 250th ACS National Meeting, held on 16-20 August 2015 in Boston, MA, USA. He gave two invited talks, one on 'Advanced Molecular Sieve Membranes' in the session of Porous Materials for Energy & Sustainability from Discovery to Application, and another on 'Nanostructured metal oxides for chemical looping processes' in the session of Chemical looping Innovation for Low-Carbon Energy.
July 2015
Dr Song attended the 12th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC12) organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), held on 20-23 July 2015, University of York, UK.
April 2015
8-9th April 2015. Dr. Song attended the ChemEngDayUK conference in Sheffield, organised by the IChemE.
November 2014
Dr Song started his JRF fellowship from the 1st November 2014. A new start of his independent research career. He is also an academic visitor to the Cavendish Laboratory, and a visiting scholar at the Southeast University (China).