The Unnatural World

Pollution of Britain’s wastewater is an ongoing serious problem which is estimated to cost £1.3 billion per year to tackle. Small organic molecules increase these issues via being difficult to remove through standard processes. Through supramolecular chemistry we can use metal ions and organic linkers as building blocks to from large 3D molecular structures capable of isolating these small molecules, however they are often ill-suited to aquatic environments. Our development of large water-soluble containers lets us analyse these pollutants in water and isolate them away from the bulk solution.

What if we could power the world using the same energy source as the Sun? And how do you hold a star in a box without melting the box? For decades, scientists have been chasing one of humanity’s biggest energy dreams: fusion power. But creating a star on Earth is not easy: fusion reactions require temperatures hotter than the Sun’s core. So how do scientists build a machine that can contain something so extreme without melting itself? Discover the global race for fusion power, the giant ITER experiment, and the remarkable materials designed to survive a miniature star.

Molecules are the building blocks of everything around us. As technology develops, there is a need to understand molecules on an individual level, not as a bulk material. Quantum information processing (QIP) uses the properties of individual molecules and has the potential to be the foundation for the next generation of quantum computers. In our team we use chemical approaches to join molecules, while keeping their own unique identities intact. This generates extended systems containing unpaired electrons for QIP, which we study using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques.