Professor Jonathan Coleman Awarded 2022 Institute of Physics David Tabor Medal

24 October 2022

Professor Jonathan Coleman, Co-PI at AMBER, the SFI Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research, and the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin, has been awarded the 2022 Institute of Physics David Tabor Medal. The Institute of Physics (IOP) is the professional body and learned society for physics, and the leading body for practising physicists, in the UK and Ireland.

Its annual awards proudly reflect the wide variety of people, places, organisations and achievements that make physics such an exciting discipline.

The IOP awards celebrate physicists at every stage of their career; from those just starting out through to physicists at the peak of their careers, and those with a distinguished career behind them.

They also recognise and celebrate companies which are successful in the application of physics and innovation, as well as employers who demonstrate their commitment and contribution to scientific and engineering apprenticeship schemes.

Prof Coleman has received his award for developing liquid phase exfoliation (LPE), a scalable process for converting layered materials into two-dimensional (2D) nanosheets. Prof Coleman’s team has demonstrated exfoliation of more than 25 layered compounds, building LPE into one of the standard methods for producing 2D nanosheets.

This has allowed the team to develop new characterisation and processing methods — pioneering applications of 2D materials in areas including nanocomposites, sensors, printed electronics and energy storage. To date, Prof Coleman’s group has used LPE to produce over 25 distinct 2D materials.

This work has created significant impact, with LPE now being a pillar method of 2D materials production and widely used by hundreds of groups globally. LPE-based materials are the basis of a wide range of applications, patents and products.

Prof Coleman commented on the achievement, “I was absolutely delighted to receive this award. It’s a wonderful recognition of all the hard work by my team over the last few years.”

Lorraine Byrne, Executive Director of AMBER, added

“Congratulations to Prof. Coleman and his team on this award.  Since the publication of the seminal Science Paper on Liquid Phase Exfoliation of 2D Materials in 2011, this research has led to significant scientific breakthroughs in the areas of energy storage, tissue engineering and sensing.

“The David Tabor Medal is a great recognition of the impact Prof. Colemans work has had in the field of nanomaterials and their applications”.

Congratulating this year’s Award winners, Institute of Physics President, Professor Sheila Rowan, said:

“On behalf of the Institute of Physics, I warmly congratulate all of this year’s Award winners.

“Each and every one of them has made a significant and positive impact in their profession, whether as a researcher, teacher, industrialist, technician or apprentice.

“Recent events have underlined the absolute necessity to encourage and reward our scientists and those who teach and encourage future generations. We rely on their dedication and innovation to improve many aspects of the lives of individuals and of our wider society.”