Sidney Fellow appointed to Chair in Engineering

Dr Andrew Flewitt receives promotion.

Sidney Fellow Dr Andrew Flewitt has been appointed to a Chair in Engineering. Dr Flewitt has been a Fellow of the College since 1999, and his research investigates 'large-area electronics', which looks at how electronic devices are made and used on large surfaces. The types of applications that people are most familiar with are displays, where there is a layer of transistors behind each pixel of a display which controls the amount of light being allowed to pass through the pixel, and solar cells which convert energy from the sun into electrical power. In both cases, Dr Flewitt is using metal oxide materials, such as zinc oxide and copper oxide, to make devices that have greater performance and lower cost than existing devices.

However, large-area electronics also encompasses sensor devices, and Dr Flewitt's research therefore includes developing very small devices on surfaces that can detect the presence of masses as small as one femtogram. This is being investigated as the potential basis of a new generation of biosensors for performing blood and other clinical tests in a GP surgery or even a home environment with immediate results.