Research project

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

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

Research outputs

Junqing Fan, Liudi Jiang, Shuncai Wang, Ruomeng Huang, Katrina Morgan, Le Zhong & Kees de Groot, 2017, Microelectronic Engineering, 174, 1-5
Type: article
Benjamin Gray, Andrew Hector, Marek Jura, John Owen & Joshua Whittam, 2017, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 5(9), 4550-4559
Type: article
M.R. Burton, S.J. Richardson, P.A. Staniec, N.J. Terrill, J.M. Elliott, A.M. Squires, N.M. White & Iris S. Nandhakumar, 2017, Electrochemistry Communications, 76, 71-74
Type: article
Nathanya J. Platt, Karl M. Kaye, Gregory J. Limburn, Samuel D. Cosham, Alexander N. Kulak, Robert G. Palgrave & Geoffrey Hyett, 2017, Dalton Transactions, 46(2), 1975-1985
Type: article
M.A. Monclus, M. Callisti, T. Polcar, L.W. Yang, J. Llorca & J.M. Molina-Aldareguia, 2017, Acta Materialia, 1-10
Type: article