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

Using polyoxometalates to enhance the capacity of lithium-oxygen batteries

Thomas Homewood, Nuria Garcia-Araez, John R. Owen, James Frith, Vivek Padmanabhan, Dino Tonti & Nieves Casañ-Pastor, 2018, Chemical Communications, 1-6

DOI: 10.1039/C8CC03832E

Type: article

Competing mechanisms on the strength of ion-irradiated Zr/Nb nanoscale multilayers

M. Callisti, M. Karlik & T. Polcar, 2018, Scripta Materialia, 152, 31-35

DOI: 10.1016/j.scriptamat.2018.03.039

Type: article

Electrodeposition of tin nanowires from a dichloromethane based electrolyte

Andrew L. Hector, Andrew Lodge, Mahboba Hasan, Philip N. Bartlett, Richard Beanland, Reza Jalili Kashtiban, William Levason, Gillian Reid, Jeremy Sloan, David C. Smith & Wenjian Zhang, 2018, RSC Advances, 8(42), 24013-24020

DOI: 10.1039/C8RA03183E

Type: article

Combination of solid state and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to explore effects of porosity in sol-gel derived BaTiO3 thin films

Joshua Whittam, Andrew L. Hector, Christopher Kavanagh, John R. Owen & Gillian Reid, 2018, ACS Omega, 3(6), 6880-6887

DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b00173

Type: article

In situ TEM observations on the structural evolution of a nanocrystalline W-Ti alloy at elevated temperatures

M. Callisti, F.D. Tichelaar & T. Polcar, 2018, Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 749, 1000-1008

DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2018.03.335

Type: article

Yb-doped mixed sesquioxide thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition

Jake J. Prentice, James A. Grant-Jacob, David P. Shepherd, Robert W. Eason & Jacob I. Mackenzie, 2018, Journal of Crystal Growth, 491, 51-56

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrysgro.2018.03.039

Type: article

Effect of layer thickness on the mechanical behavior of oxidation-strengthened Zr/Nb nanoscale multilayers

M.A. Monclus, M. Callisti, T. Polcar, L.W. Yang, J.M. Molina-Aldareguia & J Llorca, 2018, Journal of Materials Science, 53(8), 5860-5878

DOI: 10.1007/s10853-017-1665-6

Type: article