EPSRC Equipment Account - Dr A Hector Enabling Microfocus

Project overview

X-ray diffraction is the main technique by which scientists and engineers study the structures of crystalline materials, however some sample types are often neglected due to the requirement for specialised instrumentation and expertise. This proposal provides advanced equipment to apply diffraction and related methods to a series of lesser-studied sample types of great importance in technology and in understanding environmental processes. These include thin layers of material on surfaces, where information about atomic separations, particle sizes, crystal orientation and changes in the size of the lattice due to interactions with the underlying material can be obtained. This will be critical to the understanding of a range of functional materials with applications in energy conversion and storage, electronics, optoelectronics and engineering. It will also be possible to study very small regions of a material, this is important in examination of single components or regions of a sample where variations are important in understanding properties. Sample types include minerals, where the structure of individual grains will contribute to knowledge of interactions with the environment, and single components of grids of material designed to have specific interactions with light.

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Andrew Hector

Head of School

Research interests

Materials synthesis, including metal nitrides, thin film materials, sol-gel and solvothermal …
Materials characterisation – powder and thin film diffraction, microscopy and spectroscopy te…
Electrochemistry, including charge storage in battery and supercapacitor type cells, and elec…

Connect with Andrew

Email: A.L.Hector@soton.ac.uk

Other researchers

Dr Mark Light

Associate Professor

Research interests

Single crystal X-ray diffraction
Powder and materials X-ray diffraction
Total scattering and pair distribution function analysis

Connect with Mark

Email: M.E.Light@soton.ac.uk

Research outputs

Non-aqueous electrodeposition of functional semiconducting metal chalcogenides: Ge2Sb2Te5phase change memory

Philip N. Bartlett, Sophie L. Benjamin, C.H. (Kees) de Groot, Andrew L. Hector, Ruomeng Huang, Andrew Jolleys, Gabriela Kissling, William Levason, Stuart J. Pearce, Gillian Reid & Yudong Wang, 2015, Materials Horizons, 2(4), 420-426

DOI: 10.1039/C5MH00030K

Type: article

Microstructural evolution of nanometric Ti(NiCu)2 precipitates in annealed Ni–Ti–Cu thin films

M. Callisti & T. Polcar, 2015, Vacuum, 117, 1-3

DOI: 10.1016/j.vacuum.2015.03.028

Type: article

Fabrication and characterization of high-contrast mid-infrared GeTe₄ channel waveguides

Vinita Mittal, Armen Aghajani, Lewis Carpenter, James C. Gates, Jonathan Butement, Peter G.R. Smith, James S. Wilkinson & Ganapathy Senthil Murugan, 2015, Optics Letters, 40(9), 2016-2019

DOI: 10.1364/OL.40.002016

Type: article

Length-scale-dependent mechanical behaviour of Zr/Nb multilayers as a function of individual layer thickness

E. Frutos, M. Callisti, M. Karlik & T. Polcar, 2015, Materials Science and Engineering: A, 632, 137-146

DOI: 10.1016/j.msea.2015.02.071

Type: article

Ordered mesoporous silica films with pores oriented perpendicular to a titanium nitride substrate

Calum Robertson, Richard Beanland, Stuart A. Boden, Andrew Lee Hector, Reza J. Kashtiban, Jeremy Sloan, David C. Smith & Alain Walcarius, 2015, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 17(6), 4763-4770

DOI: 10.1039/c4cp05730a

Type: article

Chemical vapour deposition of antimony chalcogenides with positional and orientational control: precursor design and substrate selectivity

Sophie L. Benjamin, C.H. de Groot, Andrew L. Hector, Ruomeng Huang, Elena Koukharenko, William Levason & Gillian Reid, 2015, Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 3, 423-430

DOI: 10.1039/C4TC02327G

Type: article

Mid infrared GeTe₄ waveguides on silicon with a ZnSe isolation layer

Vinita Mittal, C. Craig, N.P. Sessions, Daniel W. Hewak, James S. Wilkinson & Ganapathy Senthil Murugan, 2015

DOI: 10.1117/12.2196663

Type: conference