Dávidné Nagy has won the Graduate Student Award for her submitted work and presentation at the E-MRS Spring Meeting in Strasbourg, France in May.

Dávidné Nagy’s research concentrates on green technology methods to purify water. In particular, she has focused on the use of photocatalysis – a process where a solid material uses energy from light to create chemical reactions. This means that solar light could be used to purify water.

At the conference, Ms Nagy presented her work which identifies materials that can both eliminate toxic chemicals from water and, at the same time, work under solar light. She has found that complex materials are most efficient – in particular, Ms Nagy modified a material (TiO2-Cu2O) with metallic silver (Ag). She found that the prepared materials had positive ability to harvest light. 

Dávidné Nagy said, “The conference was a fantastic opportunity to hear about the exciting research happening in this area. Using solar energy to purify water could have a huge global impact and my work focuses specifically on whether certain modified materials can be used for this purpose. I am very happy to have been recognised at the conference with this award.”