Professor Sam Stranks

Sam Stranks (@samstranks) is Professor of Energy Materials & Optoelectronics and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology and a Cavendish Joint Member in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and an elected Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics.

Research

Research in the Optoelectronic Materials and Device Spectroscopy Group (StranksLab) focuses on the optical and electronic properties of emerging semiconductor systems in order to control the absorption or emission of light and/or manipulate the transport and recombination of energised charge carriers in these materials. Our work finds a number of applications including photovoltaics for energy, X-Ray detectors for medical imaging and LEDs and lasers for light emission. We develop optical spectroscopic techniques to assess the optoelectronic quality of materials and relate these characteristics directly to their chemical, material, morphological and structural properties through multimodal measurements. We employ a number of cutting edge techniques to monitor the photophysics of full devices under operating conditions with high spatial and temporal resolution. Through these approaches, we can make new fundamental scientific discoveries as well as construct optimised devices in which we push efficiencies to their theoretical limits. Our developed devices and in-situ and operando imaging approaches are applicable to a range of fields including energy materials, medical imaging and biological systems.

Our group generally covers four main areas, which comprise our research sub-groups. These themes are highly cross-cutting and facilitate collaborations between our physicists, chemists, materials scientists and engineers. You can read more about recent activities and techniques within each sub-group at the links below. Most projects in the group fall within one or several of these categories, making these pages a good resource for prospective applicants to understand the activities in the group.

Materials Synthesis and Characterisation: Broadly covering materials chemistry synthesis and materials characterisation including diffraction and electron microscopy
Spectroscopy: Broadly covering optical spectroscopy (time-resolved and steady-state), both macroscopic and microscopic
Light Harvesting: Broadly covering light harvesting devices including solar cells and photodetectors.
Light Emission: Broadly covering light emission systems and devices including light emitting diodes and lasers.

Biography

Sam Stranks (@samstranks) is Professor of Optoelectronics and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology and a Cavendish Joint Member in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and an elected Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics.

Sam graduated from the University of Adelaide in 2007 with a BA (German and Applied Mathematics), BSc Hons (Physics and Physical Chemistry) and a University Medal. He completed his PhD as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, receiving the 2012 Institute of Physics Roy Thesis Prize. From 2012-2014, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford University and Worcester College, Oxford, before holding a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014-2016). Sam established his research group (@Strankslab) in Cambridge in 2017.

Sam's research focuses on the optical and electronic properties of emerging semiconductors including halide perovskites, carbon allotropes and organic semiconductors for low-cost electronics applications such as photovoltaics and lighting. He has led multi-centre projects from funders such as ERC, EPSRC, Leverhulme Trust and Royal Society totalling over £17M (£10M as PI). He received the 2016 IUPAP Young Scientist in Semiconductor Physics Prize, the 2017 Early Career Prize from the European Physical Society, the 2018 Henry Moseley Award and Medal from the Institute of Physics the 2019 Marlow Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the 2021 IEEE Stuart Wenham Award, the 2021 Leverhulme Prize in Physics, the 2021 EES Lectureship, the 2022 Lem Prize and 2024 Blavatnik Awards in the UK Finalist. He is a TED Fellow and in 2017 was listed by the MIT Technology Review as one of the 35 under 35 innovators in Europe. Sam is a co-founder of Swift Solar, a startup developing high-performance perovskite PV panels, and Sustain/Ed, a not-for-profit developing education for school-age children around climate change solutions. He is also an Associate Editor at the AAAS journal Science Advances, and sits on the Editorial Boards for the journals ACS Energy Letters and Advanced Energy Materials.

Full publications list on Google Scholar here.

Publications

Key publications:

Pan, L.; Dai, L.; Burton, O. J.; Chen, L.; Andrei, V.; Zhang, Y.; Ren, D.; Cheng, J.; Wu, L.; Frohna, K.; Abfalterer, A.; Yang, T. C-J.; Niu, W.; Xia, M.; Hofmann, S.; Dyson, P. J.; Reisner, E.; Sirringhaus, H.; *Luo, J.; *Hagfeldt, A.; *Grätzel, M.; *Stranks, S. D.; High carrier mobility along the [111] orientation in Cu2O photoelectrodes Nature 2024, 628, 765-770
Ji, K.; Lin, W.; Sun, Y.; Cui, L.; Shamsi, J.; Chiang, Y-H.; Chen, J.; Tennyson, E. M.; Dai, L.; Li, Q.; Frohna, K.; Anaya, M.; Greenham, N. C.; *Stranks, S. D. Self-supervised Deep Learning for Tracking Degradation of Perovskite LEDs with Multispectral Imaging Nature Machine Intelligence 2023, 5, 1225–1235
*Senanayak, S.P.; Dey, K.; Shivanna, R.; Li, W.; Ghosh, D.; Zhang, Y.; Roose, B.; Zelewski, S. J.; Andaji-Garmaroudi, Z.; Wood, W.; Tiwale, N.; MacManus-Driscoll, J. L.; Friend, R. H.; *Stranks, S. D.; *Sirringhaus, H. Charge transport in mixed metal halide perovskite semiconductors. Nature Materials 2023, 22, 216–224
Cho, C.; Feldmann, S.; Yeom, K. M.; Jang, Y-W.; Kahmann, S.; Huang, J-Y.; Yang, T. C-J.; Khayyat, M. N. T.; Wu, Y-R.; Choi, M.; Noh, J. H.; Stranks, S.; *Greenham, N. C. Efficient vertical charge transport in polycrystalline halide perovskites revealed by four-dimensional tracking of charge carriers. Nature Materials 2022, 21, 1388–1395
Macpherson, S.; Doherty, T. A. S.; Winchester, A. J.; Kosar, S.; Johnstone, D. N.; Chiang, Y.-H.; Galkowski, K.; Anaya, M.; Frohna, K.; Iqbal, A. N.; Nagane, S.; Roose, B.; Andaji-Garmaroudi, Z.; Orr, K. W. P.; Parker, J. E.; Midgley, P. A.; *Dani, K. M.; *Stranks, S. D. Local nanoscale phase impurities are degradation sites in halide perovskites Nature 2022, 607, 294-300
Frohna, K.; *Anaya, M.; Macpherson, S.; Sung, J.; Doherty, T. A. S.; Chiang, Y.-H.; Winchester, A. J.; Orr, K. W. P.; Parker, J. E.; Quinn, P. D.; Dani, K. M.; Rao, A.; *Stranks, S. D. Nanoscale chemical heterogeneity dominates the optoelectronic response of alloyed perovskite solar cells Nature Nanotechnology 2022, 17, 190–196
Doherty, T. A. S.; Nagane, S.; Kubicki, D. J.; Jung, Y.-K.; Johnstone, D. N. ; Iqbal, A. N.; Guo, D.; Frohna, K.; Danaie, M.; Tennyson, E. M.; Macpherson, S.; Abfalterer, A.; Anaya, M.; Chiang, Y.-H.; Crout, P.; Ruggeri, F. S.; Collins, S.; Grey, C. P.; Walsh, A.; Midgley, P. A.; *Stranks, S. D. Stabilized tilted-octahedra halide perovskites inhibit local formation of performance-limiting phases Science 2021, 374(6575), 1598-1605

Full list here and on Google Scholar.

Other publications:

See a list of media and impact activities.

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching:

University of Cambridge:

CETI Engineering Maths Lecture Course, Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, 2019 – Present

CETI Examiner/Chair, Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, 2021 – Present (Chair in 2023-2024)

CETI Computing Skills Course Coordinator, Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, 2019 – Present

Physics at the Nanoscale NE.07 Graduate MPhil Lecture Course, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, 2017 – 2019

Supervisor in Physics (Part IB Quantum Physics; Optics, Waves and Oscillations; Experimental Methods; Condensed Matter Physics) and Chemical Engineering (CETI Engineering Maths), Clare College, Cambridge, 2017 – Present
Director of Studies in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Clare College, Cambridge, 2019 – Present

University of Oxford:

College Lecturer in Physics, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 2011 – 2014

Research supervision:

See list of current and former team members of our research group.

Other Professional Activities

Selected Conference Organisation

Materials Research Society Spring Conference Co-Chair, Seattle, USA, 2025

Materials Research Society Fall Symposium Co-Chair, Boston, USA, 2023

Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) Conference Chair, Online, NanoGe, 2021

NanoGe Fall Meeting Symposium Chair, Online, 2020

Materials Research Society Fall Symposium Co-Chair, Boston, USA, 2020

E-MRS Spring Meeting Symposium G Chair, Nice, France, 2019

IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference (PVSC), Area 6 Co-chair, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019

Conference on Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics, Co-chair, Rennes, France, 2018

Selected External Peer Review and Panels

EPSRC New Horizons Peer Review Panel, 2022

STFC Physical Sciences & Engineering Advisory Panel, 2020 – 2023

Member of EPSRC Peer Review College, 2020 – Present

Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Division Awards Committee, 2019 – 2022
Diamond Light Source II Energy Materials (Photovoltaics) Academic Stakeholder lead, 2018
Diamond Light Source Peer Review Panel Member, 2019 – 2024

Regular Peer-reviewer for: journals including Nature (and Nature family), Science, ACS Energy Letters, Physical Review Letters, ACS Nano, Nano Letters, J. Amer. Chem. Soc., Joule, Advanced Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., Appl. Phys. Lett., and grant agencies including Royal Society, EPSRC/UKRI, Department of Energy (DOE), German Research Foundation, European Research Council, Swiss National Science Foundation, National Science Foundation, 2010 – Present

Selected Advisory Boards and Editorial Duties: