Samia Said

Samia Said is a PhD student in the Electrochemical Innovation Lab at UCL with Dr Thomas S. Miller and Professor Christopher A. Howard, working on characterising new materials for sodium ion batteries to order to understand and improve their electrochemical performance.

Two dimensional (2D) materials with atomically thin layers, including the graphene, metal chalcogenides, metal oxides and phosphorene have drawn attention particularly in the application of energy storage systems. These promising materials, however are not well established and an in-depth understanding, across multiple length scales, of the correlations between electrochemical performance and their structural, chemical, and mechanical properties is still required in order to apply them into advanced energy storage systems.

A powerful tool that allows visualisation of nanoscale processes of the electrode/electrolyte interface is, in situ and operando Electrochemical-Atomic Force Microscopy (EC-AFM). Unlike other in situ and operando techniques, EC-AFM can provide nano-spatially resolved results, whilst maintaining the integrity of the sample in real battery environments. This is incredibly important as it enables the probing of key phenomena taking place at the surface of electrodes, that determine overall performance. Therefore, Samia is utilising this technique to characterise the interfacial properties of promising 2D (and 1D) materials as anodes for energy storage devices.

Samia Said

Recent AFM papers:

• Vadhva P., Gill T. E., Cruddos J. H., Said S., Marco Siniscalchi M., Narayanan S., Pasta M, Miller T. S. & Rettie A. J. E., (2023) Engineering Solution-Processed Non-Crystalline Solid Electrolytes for Li Metal Batteries Chem. Mater. 35, 3, 1168–1176

• Zhang Z., Said S., Smith K., Jervis R., Howard C. A., Shearing P. R., Brett D. J . L., Miller T. S., (2021) Characterizing Batteries by In Situ Electrochemical Atomic Force Microscopy: A Critical Review Advanced Energy Materials, 11, 38

• Zhang Z., Said S., Smith K., Zhang Y. S., He G., Jervis R., Shearing P. R., Miller T. S. & Brett D. J. L. , (2021) Dendrite suppression by anode polishing in zinc-ion batteries, J. Mater. Chem. A, 9, 15355-15362

Biography: Samia was born and raised in London, but left the nest to go to the University of Manchester to complete a degree Chemistry. After that she attempted to get a real job in London, but quickly found herself back at University for a Masters in chemical engineering at Imperial College London in the Multifunctional Nanomaterials group under the supervision of Professor Camille Petit, before starting her PhD studying 2D materials.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samia-said-989655163/

Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/electrochemical-innovation-lab/samia-said

---

Are you a woman conducting AFM research or know of someone you would like to nominate to be featured in our next #WomenInAFM campaign? Contact us at community@nunano.com!

Also, check out our previous March and November 2021 Women in AFM blog posts to read about more researchers.

Why are we celebrating women in AFM? (March 2021)

Why do we need to highlight women in AFM? (Nov 2021)