The 21st century has already brought a surge of exciting new device concepts: for example, memristors, artificial synapses and ultraviolet light-emitting diodes. However, no matter how promising the concept, the performance of any device will be limited inherently by the properties of the materials it contains.
As a result, my work centres on the characterisation and development of broad, mutually compatible, new 'palettes' of materials from which future devices can be created. I am also interested in the ways in which overall material properties can be controlled using artificial structuring on the nanoscale. Advances in these areas are necessary, both to overcome the ultimate performance limits of existing devices and to enable new device concepts to be realised. These are important first steps towards new commercial applications.
I joined Imperial as a Lecturer in 2011 and am funded primarily by the Royal Society and by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop a new family of scandium-based nitride materials, in which a wide range of multifunctional properties should be achieved. This work is running in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, where I remain an academic visitor.
My research also involves extensive analysis of the crystal and structural defects that frequently degrade devices, mainly using X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy techniques. My aim is to understand and ultimately control the properties of defects, in order to minimise their impact on device performance. This research theme was developed through previous work at the Departments of Materials Science and Physics at the University of Cambridge, during my PhD and subsequent independent Oppenheimer and Jesus College Research Fellowships.