Sarah Fearn

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About

Sarah Fearn is a materials scientist whose research sits at the intersection of combinatorial chemistry and solid-state electrochemistry, with a particular focus on discovering and characterizing novel mixed ionic-electronic conducting oxides. Her work has made significant contributions to the development of materials for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) applications, where identifying high-performance cathode materials is critical to advancing clean energy technologies. Fearn's most impactful contribution lies in pioneering combinatorial and high-throughput approaches to screen perovskite-structured materials, dramatically accelerating the pace of materials discovery. Her 2008 study on the combinatorial characterisation of mixed conducting perovskites remains her most cited work with 18 citations, building on earlier foundational research from 2006 that established combinatorial searching strategies for mixed conductors. Notably, she employed robotic ink-jet printing techniques to synthesize systematic compositional libraries — such as the La₀.₈Sr₀.₂Mn₁₋ₓCoxO₃₊δ (LSMC) system — and utilized secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) for high-throughput characterization. These methodologies offered the field a powerful toolkit for efficiently mapping structure, composition, and non-stoichiometry across broad compositional spaces, helping to identify promising SOFC cathode candidates with greater efficiency than traditional one-at-a-time approaches.