Photo of Catherine Aitchison

Catherine Aitchison

Assistant Professor

Principal Investigator, Functional Pi Materials Group, Laboratory of Organic Electronics

Presentation

Assistant Professor Catherine Aitchison is the Functional Pi Materials group leader at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics.

Cath received her bachelor’s and MSci degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Her master’s research was in supramolecular chemistry, working on self-assembled metal-organic capsules with Prof. Jonathan Nitschke. 

In 2016 she moved to Liverpool to start her chemistry PhD with Professor Andy Cooper. In the Cooper group she switched her focus to organic semiconductors for solar fuels applications. Her work centered around developing structure-activity relationships and using these to balance the different material properties that aid in function.
After finishing her PhD, Cath joined the University of Oxford as a postdoc with Professor Iain McCulloch. She worked on advancing research in photocatalysis and organic photovoltaics (OPV) through the design, synthesis and testing of donor-acceptor polymers.

In autumn 2024 Cath joined LiU as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and WISE fellow in the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Her group - Functional Pi Materials - develop conjugated organic molecules and polymers. Their focus is synthesising and studying materials with self-assembled structures that aid in function. They make and test materials for various solar fuels, photovoltaic and membrane applications and aim to use the flexibility of organic chemistry to tune material properties.
 

CV

Education

2020 - PhD in Chemistry, University of Liverpool
2016 - Masters in Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge
2015 - Bachelors in Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge

Positions

2024 - Present - Assistant Professor and group leader, LOE, LiU
2020 - 2024 - Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Oxford

Publications

2024

Catherine M. Aitchison, Iain McCulloch (2024) Organic Photovoltaic Materials for Solar Fuel Applications: A Perfect Match? Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 36, p. 1781-1792 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Benjamin J. Willner, Catherine M. Aitchison, Filip Podjaski, Wanpeng Lu, Junfu Tian, James R. Durrant, Iain McCulloch (2024) Correlation between the Molecular Properties of Semiconducting Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity and Their Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production Journal of the American Chemical Society (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2023

Catherine M. Aitchison, Soranyel Gonzalez‐Carrero, Shilin Yao, Max Benkert, Zhiyuan Ding, Neil P. Young, Benjamin Willner, Floriana Moruzzi, Yuanbao Lin, Junfu Tian, Peter D. Nellist, James R. Durrant, Iain McCulloch (2023) Templated 2D Polymer Heterojunctions for Improved Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production Advanced Materials, Vol. 36 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Floriana Moruzzi, Weimin Zhang, Balaji Purushothaman, Soranyel Gonzalez-Carrero, Catherine M. Aitchison, Benjamin Willner, Fabien Ceugniet, Yuanbao Lin, Jan Kosco, Hu Chen, Junfu Tian, Maryam Alsufyani, Joshua S. Gibson, Ed Rattner, Yasmine Baghdadi, Salvador Eslava, Marios Neophytou, James R. Durrant, Ludmilla Steier, Iain McCulloch (2023) Solution-processable polymers of intrinsic microporosity for gas-phase carbon dioxide photoreduction Nature Communications, Vol. 14, Article 3443 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Josua Wachsmuth, Andreas Distler, Chao Liu, Thomas Heumüller, Yang Liu, Catherine M. Aitchison, Alina Hauser, Michael Rossier, Amélie Robitaille, Marc-Antoine Llobel, Pierre-Olivier Morin, Anaïs Thepaut, Charline Arrive, Iain McCulloch, Yinhua Zhou, Christoph J. Brabec, Hans-Joachim Egelhaaf (2023) Fully Printed and Industrially Scalable Semitransparent Organic Photovoltaic Modules: Navigating through Material and Processing Constraints Solar RRL, Vol. 7 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

Research

Organisation