Dr Sophie Pain MRSC, MIMMM

Dr Sophie Pain

School of Engineering
Assistant Professor in Sustainable Materials
125th Anniversary Fellow

Contact details

Email
s.l.pain@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Sophie Pain is an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Materials in the School of Engineering and the School of Metallurgy and Materials. She is a 125th Anniversary Fellow and a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Engineering, University of Warwick, 2023
  • MSci in Chemistry with Industrial Experience and a Year in Computer Science, University of Birmingham, 2019

Biography

Dr Sophie Pain is an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Materials in the School of Engineering and the School of Metallurgy and Materials. She is also a 125th Anniversary Fellow and a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow.

Sophie has a PhD in Engineering from the University of Warwick, entitled “Enhancing electronic materials by chemical treatments and nanoscale dielectrics”, and an MSci in Chemistry from the University of Birmingham.

In 2024, Sophie was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship (“Achieving sustainable solar: atomic manufacturing for recyclable photovoltaics”). She was an Assistant Professor (Research Focused) in the School of Engineering, University of Warwick until she joined University of Birmingham in 2026.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Pain is interested in supervising PhD projects on silicon materials for photovoltaics, thin film growth via atomic layer deposition and photovoltaics sustainability/recycling. Previous PhD supervision has included atomic layer deposition for 2D materials/transition metal dichalcogenides, silicon battery anodes, and anti-soiling coatings. Future PhD opportunities will be advertised via findaphd.com.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Grant, NE, Yadav, A, Pain, SL, Wilkins, L, Khorani, E & Black, L 2026, 'A non-destructive method to infer the bulk lifetime in high-quality silicon wafers', Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, vol. 297, 114125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2025.114125

Pain, SL, Yadav, A, Walker, D, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Atomic Layer Deposition of Hafnium Oxide Passivating Layers on Silicon: Impact of Precursor Selection', Physica Status Solidi - Rapid Research Letters, vol. 19, no. 1, 2400202. https://doi.org/10.1002/pssr.202400202

Healy, BFM, Pain, SL, Grant, NE & Murphy, J 2025, 'Direct thermal atomic layer deposition of high-κ dielectrics on monolayer MoS2: nucleation and growth', Nanoscale, vol. 17, no. 25, pp. 15436-15447. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5nr01144b

Romain, X, Wilshaw, PR, Stantchev, RI, Miao, T, Mou, S, Niewelt, T, Mcnab, S, Pain, SL, Grant, NE, Bonilla, RS, Pickwell-Macpherson, E & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Electrically Tunable Si-Based THz Photomodulator Using Dielectric/Polymer Surface Gating', IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology , vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 76-83. https://doi.org/10.1109/TTHZ.2024.3477983

Yadav, A, Pain, SL, Wilkins, L, Grant, NE, Lord, JS, Yokoyama, K & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Extracting surface and bulk recombination parameters for passivated silicon using photoexcited muon spin spectroscopy', Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 138, no. 13, 135701. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0288808

Pain, SL & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Forecasting solar module waste in the United Kingdom', Energy Strategy Reviews, vol. 61, 101849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2025.101849

Khorani, E, Pain, SL, Niewelt, T, Bonilla, RS, Rahman, T, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Hierarchical Time-Series Approaches for Photovoltaic System Performance Forecasting With Sparse Datasets', IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 173-180. https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2024.3472222

Healy, BFM, Pain, SL, Walker, M, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Impact of Co-Reactants in Atomic Layer Deposition of High-κ Dielectrics on Monolayer Molybdenum Disulfide', ACS Applied Nano Materials, vol. 8, no. 14, pp. 7334-7346. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.5c00901

Pain, SL, Wilkins, L, Yadav, A, Han, Y, Beanland, R, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2025, 'Interfacial oxides for charge control of hafnium oxide surface passivation of silicon', Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, vol. 282, 113439. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2025.113439

Grant, NE, Pain, SL, Khorani, E, Jefferies, R, Wratten, A, McNab, S, Walker, D, Han, Y, Beanland, R, Bonilla, RS & Murphy, JD 2024, 'Activation of Al2O3 surface passivation of silicon: Separating bulk and surface effects', Applied Surface Science, vol. 645, 158786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2023.158786

Yadav, A, Niewelt, T, Pain, SL, Grant, NE, Lord, JS, Yokoyama, K & Murphy, JD 2024, 'Formation and annihilation of bulk recombination-active defects induced by muon irradiation of crystalline silicon', Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 136, no. 5, 055707. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0217952

Pain, SL, Khorani, E, Yadav, A, Niewelt, T, Leimenstoll, A, Healy, BFM, Walker, M, Walker, D, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2024, 'Influence of co-reactants on surface passivation by nanoscale hafnium oxide layers grown by atomic layer deposition on silicon', RSC Applied Interfaces, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 471-482. https://doi.org/10.1039/d3lf00210a

Healy, BFM, Pain, SL, Lloyd-Hughes, J, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2024, 'Quantifying photoluminescence variability in monolayer molybdenum disulfide films grown by chemical vapour deposition', Materials Research Express, vol. 11, no. 1, 015002. https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1591/ad18ef

Niewelt, T, Maischner, F, Kwapil, W, Khorani, E, Pain, SL, Jung, Y, Hopkins, ECB, Frosch, M, Altermatt, PP, Guo, H, Wang, YC, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2024, 'Stability of industrial gallium-doped Czochralski silicon PERC cells and wafers', Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, vol. 266, 112645. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2023.112645

Healy, BFM, Pain, SL, Lloyd-Hughes, J, Grant, NE & Murphy, JD 2024, 'Tunable Photoluminescence from Monolayer Molybdenum Disulfide', Advanced Materials Interfaces, vol. 11, no. 28, 2400305. https://doi.org/10.1002/admi.202400305

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