News - Finden

The 27th North American Catalysis Society Meeting NAM27

Our R&D Lead Scientist Dr Antony Vamvakeros spoke at the 27th North American Catalysis Society Meeting (NAM27) in New York. This biennial meeting is widely recognized as the premier topical catalysis conference for matters related to homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, while also including broad coverage of electro-catalysis and photo-catalysis.

He presented our work on diffraction, tomography, catalysis, fuel cells, liion batteriesand neural networks.

Team Up for Transfer – KFS Transfer Workshop

Our Director Simon Jacques discussed how to increase the societal benefit of synchrotron radiation sources at the KFS Transfer Workshop with over forty attendees in Berlin.

Discussions at the workshop focussed on synchrotron achievements, challenges and ideas for future improvements with three sessions on, “Synchrotron Access for Industrial Research”, “Synchrotron/Industry hardware co-developments” and “Synchrotron/Industry methodological co-developments”.

The workshop brought together synchrotron radiation sources, academics and spin-offs as intermediaries to attract industrial research.

“It was great to hear that industry, large scale facilities and indeed academia recognise the pivotal role that intermediary companies like Finden have in the research landscape. This included addressing the fundamental issues of ever larger data driven by advances in instrumentation. Our involvement is a win, win, win for facilities, academia and industry. We are using spare measurement capacity, relieving the data processing and analysis burden from the facilities and adding value to industry to academia. This is leading to more efficient research, allowing accelerated innovation enabling academia and industry to more quickly address societal needs.” ~ Simon Jacques

Li-ion battery project collaboration with Teesmat

It was exciting to be involved in this TEESMAT scientific case study. We contributed to the design and acquisition of ex situ X-ray scattering/diffraction tomography measurements of industrially-relevant prolonged cycled Li-ion batteries at beamline ID31 of the ESRF. The data handling of the raw data (ca. 2.25 TB) and the analysis of the ca. 6,500,000 reconstructed SAXS/XRD patterns was significantly accelerated by our inhouse developed deep learning methods, such as the PQ-Net (you see here the open access paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41524-021-00542-4). We had the opportunity to collaborate with CRF, CEA, VITO and CERTH on this project, looking at degradation mechanisms in Li-ion batteries.

Cross-cluster project close meeting

It was good to see everyone and celebrate at the Cross-cluster project close meeting. It was a very successful project on Accelerating neutron tomography with applied deep learning. We have developed two novel approaches using neural networks to denoise and remove angular undersampling artefacts in tomography datasets; we developed and demonstrated them using neutron tomography data but they can be applied to other tomography methods such as X-ray micro/nano-CT, X-ray diffraction/fluorescence CT etc
Thanks to Harwell Science and Innovation Campus and ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Join us in the Faraday Institution FUSE2022 summer internship programme in batteries

Join us for an undergraduate summer internship with Faraday in the Chemical Imaging of Batteries.

Studying a STEM degree? Wondering what career to pursue? Interested in finding out more about the battery sector? Keen to spend time with a dynamic community of pioneering battery researchers seeking to find solutions to support a fully electric future?

We are offering an 8 week internship for undergraduate students to work on our battery related project – Chemical Imaging of Batteries.

In order to aid the transition to renewable energy and electrified transportation, it is vital for batteries to be able to provide higher energy densities, greater durability and increased lifetimes. To achieve these aims, researchers are focusing on an understanding of the physical and chemical mechanisms at play, applying advanced characterization techniques to help drive our understanding. Finden are developing novel chemical tomography characterization and data analysis techniques to enable the physicochemical structure of Li ion batteries to be studied. The internal chemistry can be directly observed inside intact batteries under operating conditions, providing unique insights into performance and degradation.

We are working with the Faraday Institutions Next Generation Cathode Materials Project, FutureCat at the University of Sheffield to understand how and why the novel cathode materials being developed there are better able to withstand prolonged cycling than current commercial materials.

We are seeking a highly motivated student to work with us in applying and benchmarking our novel methods (e.g. chemical segmentation algorithms, machine learning networks) to identifying and fitting experimental X-ray diffraction experimental data acquired on commercial Li ion batteries, and to apply these to the study of FutureCat’s novel cathode materials.

Supervisor: Dr Stephen Price
University: University of Sheffield & Finden Ltd
Location: Remote
Start date: The internship is a full-time role for 8 weeks [Flexible 1 June – 30 September 2022].

For more about our internship visit https://futurecat.ac.uk/faraday-undergraduate-summer-experience-fuse-2022-opportunities/

New workshop on Neutron Powder Diffraction on Catalytic Materials

Our Chief Scientific Officer Prof. Andrew Beale will be speaking at an afternoon workshop on the topic of Neutron Powder Diffraction on Catalytic Materials on 22 March at 13:30 GMT. The workshop will take place in Building R68, Room CR12, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, OX11 0QX.

Neutron diffraction is a powerful technique for determining the atomic and/or magnetic structure of a sample in the various kinetic states of matter. The technique is similar to X-ray diffraction but the different type of radiation gives complementary information. We cordially invite researchers with an interest in seeing how these techniques can potentially be exploited to deliver new insights into the structure and properties of catalytic materials to this workshop!

For more information and to register for free visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-on-neutron-powder-diffraction-on-catalytic-materials-tickets-292273998397

New position for a Machine Learning and Tomography Scientist

We invite applications for a Machine Learning and Tomography Scientist. The position is initially limited to 1 year. As the Machine Learning and Tomography Scientist, you will be responsible for developing algorithms and machine/deep learning models to handle, analyse and denoise X-ray CT, spectroscopy and diffraction/scattering data.

For more information and to apply visit – https://www.nature.com/naturecareers/job/machine-learning-and-tomography-scientist-finden-ltd-752936

Finden in new Faraday annual report

Finden were pleased to be mentioned in the Faraday Institution 2020/21 Annual report on batteries. The report covers how the organisation is:

Conducting ground-breaking research to improve battery performance
Accelerating research to commercial outcomes
Inspiring and training the next generation
Informing policy and engaging the public.

More information in the Faraday Institution annual report on pages 59 and 66. You can read the full report at https://www.faraday.ac.uk/2020-21-annual-report/

The CAROTS Startup Guide for scientists is out!

The last publication of the CAROTS project: The CAROTS Startup Guide has been published. This guide has been written within the CAROTS project with contribution from our Director Dr Simon Jacques and CSO Prof Andrew Beale to help future founders of Scientific Service Companies (SSCs). It is a tailored guide that will help scientists on their way to starting up the next Scientific Service Company in Europe. In this guide they will learn about 1) different kinds of business models, 2) the market they will operate within, 3) how to take their service to market and sell it, 4) future ideas about intellectual property, and 5) how they will fund their startup in the early days.

You will find the guide for download at https://www.carots.eu/sites/sites_custom/site_carots/content/e114136/e151844/CAROTSStartupGuide.pdf

μ-CT Investigation into the Impact of a Fuel-Borne Catalyst Additive on the Filtration Efficiency and Backpressure of Gasoline Particulate Filters

Finden, working with Infineum UK Ltd. and muVIS (Uni. Southampton), used micro-CT to quantify the beneficial effects of a fuel borne catalyst on the back pressure and filtration efficiency of a gasoline particulate filter tested under real world conditions.

Find the article at https://saemobilus.sae.org/content/04-15-02-0006/

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