Professor Jenny Nelson - Faraday open Prize: Faraday Lectureship Prize

Professor Jenny Nelson FRSC

Winner: 2024 Faraday open prize: Faraday Lectureship Prize

Imperial College London

For contributions to the understanding and development of novel electronic materials for solar energy conversion.

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My number one motivation is to use science to tackle the causes and consequences of climate change and help bring about a more sustainable future than the one we are currently heading for.

Professor Jenny Nelson's work investigates how electronic materials convert solar energy (packets of light energy called photons) into electrical or chemical energy. She wants to understand how changing the structure or chemistry of the material can improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion.

Jenny has focused on molecular electronic materials, which are attractive because of the wide range of possible varieties that could be made and because, thanks to innovations in materials, efficiency has increased steadily from around 1% to almost 20%, beginning to match silicon. The energy conversion mechanism in these materials has interesting parallels with the natural process of photosynthesis and with artificial photochemical energy conversion.

Read winner biography

Jenny Nelson is a Royal Society Research Professor at the Department of Physics, Imperial College London, where she leads research into new materials for photovoltaic solar energy conversion. She moved to Imperial in 1989 after completing degrees in physics at the Universities of Cambridge and Bristol. Her current research is focused on understanding the properties of molecular semiconductor materials and their application to photovoltaic and photochemical solar energy conversion. This work lies at the interface of physics and chemistry and combines fundamental electrical, spectroscopic and structural studies of pi-conjugated molecular electronic materials with computational modelling of the materials’ optoelectronic properties and device optimisation.

In recent work, Jenny has explored the parallels between energy conversion in artificial photovoltaic systems and natural photosynthesis. She also collaborates with the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial to explore the mitigation potential of renewable technologies and to promote sustainable development.

Professor Nelson is a Highly Cited author who has published over 300 articles in peer reviewed journals, several book chapters and a book on the physics of solar cells. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and has won several awards, including the Royal Society’s Armourers and Brasiers’ Company Prize, the Institute of Physics Joule and Faraday medals, and the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists’ Cherry award.

Q&A

How did you first become interested in chemistry?

Both my parents were inorganic chemists, so I was aware of some aspects of chemistry, such as the vocabulary and the smells, from a young age. I remember trying (and failing) to pronounce thiocyanate when I was little. Now I work with it. By the time I started to study chemistry at school I was quite familiar with it, and that made it easy to find it interesting.

Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career.

Apart from my school science teachers and my parents, there were many inspirational figures. I would particularly like to acknowledge Donal Bradley, who not only hired me into a faculty position but was the first physicist I worked with who regarded interest in and fluency with chemistry as something positive for our subject. I also want to thank Michael Graetzel and James Durrant, who strongly encouraged my interest in chemical photovoltaic systems when I was a postdoc.

What motivates you?

My number one motivation is to use science to tackle the causes and consequences of climate change and help bring about a more sustainable future than the one we are currently heading for. This motivates me to work on the science and application of renewable energy and also to try to support younger scientists and students who share these concerns.

What has been a highlight for you (either personally or in your career)?

The research students, post-docs and collaborators that I have had the privilege to work with (far too many to name!).

What does good research culture look like/mean to you?

Listening, critical thinking, common goals and respect.
Taking time and care to understand a problem properly.
Really wanting to help and develop others, really believing that others have things you can learn from.

Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?

We don’t solve difficult challenges without them. Collaboration is how we grow and learn.