Prof Caterina Ducati

Caterina Ducati is Professor in Nanomaterials at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, and Director of the Wolfson Electron Microscope Suite. The primary focus of her research is the characterization and application of nanomaterials in devices for energy harvesting and energy storage using advanced electron microscopy techniques. She is interested in understanding structural, optical, electronic and ionic transport properties at the nanoscale, and how these change during operation in composite devices, including solar cells and light-emitting diodes, batteries and other electrochemical storage devices. The list of Cate's publications retrieved by Google Scholar can be found here.

Cate is Director of the MPhil in Micro- and Nanotechnology Enterprise and co-chair of the Quantum and Advanced Materials for a Sustainable Society (QAMSS) Strategic Research Initiative. 

Cate is a co-investigator on the Faraday Institution's LEAP (and previously the Battery Degradation) project, led by Prof Clare Grey. 

Cate is a Tutor, Director of Studies in Materials Science and a Fellow of Trinity College. 

Her PhD (1999-2002) was entitled "Nanostructured Carbon for Field Emission and Electrochemistry Applications", and was carried out at the Electronic Devices and Materials Group, Department of Engineering, Cambridge. Her interest has focused on the synthesis of carbon nanotubes, and the study of their growth model derived from transmission electron microscopy analysis. She has also been involved in various experiments concerning the growth of metal-seeded nanostructured carbon films, silicon and silicon carbide nanowires, nickel and cobalt sulphide nanowires, titanium dioxide nanocrystals. From April 2003 she was a KTP Associate working on Programme 4151 between the University of Cambridge and Alphasense Limited. Then, between 2004 and 2007, as a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, she worked on new properties of metal oxide nanostructures for electronics and catalysis. She held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to study photon-stimulated spectroscopy and electron microscopy of nanostructures (2007-2012). From 2009 to 2013 she was a Lecturer, and then a Reader in the Department until 2019.  In 2010 she was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant to study third generation solar cells at the nanoscale. In 2014, she was awared an ERC Proof of Concept grant to study air purification through novel metal-metal oxide nanocomposites. Between 2005 and 2008 she was a Sackler Junior Fellow, and then a Research Fellow at Churchill College until 2015. Between 2014-2024 she supported the management of the NanoDTC in Cambridge (serving as teaching director for a period and then as member of the core management team).