Tawfique Hasan

Early life and education Hasan was born in Bangladesh. He attended the Islamic University of Technology, where he majored in electronic engineering. After completing his undergraduate degree, Hasan moved to Australia, where he joined the University of New South Wales as a Master's student in microelectronics. His Master of Engineering dissertation investigated CMOS processing. He moved to the University of Cambridge for his PhD, where he worked on carbon nanomaterials for ultrafast photonic devices. Hasan was particularly interested in polymer composites, which can be used as saturable absorbers for optical switches and optical amplifier noise suppressors.

Whilst at the University of Cambridge, Hasan was a founder of Cambridge Graphene Limited. The company developed a scalable approach to producing graphene-based inks that are aqueous and non-toxic. Hasan suspended tiny graphene particles of graphene in a solvent mixture that was incorporated into water-based inks. The graphene-based inks are quick to dry, stick to substrates well, and are waterproof.

The coffee ring effect, a phenomenon of fluid mechanics, can have a detrimental impact on printed electronic devices. The effect occurs because liquid evaporates rapidly at the edges of a droplet, causing particles within the droplets to accumulate and an uneven surface to form.

In 2019, Hasan developed the world's smallest spectrometers (approx. 100 μm long), that he showed could be used to image onion cells. The spectrometers were made from semiconductor-based nanowires. The composition of the nanowire (semiconductor) is gradually changed from one end of the nanowire to another, which altered the optical properties (and band gaps) along the length of the nanowires.

Selected publications