Professor Driscoll's group at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy specialises in thin film design, deposition, and characterisation. Prof. Driscoll and her lab have several decades experience in thin film design for superconductivity, battery cells, and emerging memory technologies. In our lab, we have state of the art pulsed laser deposition and sputtering facilities, X-ray diffraction, and electrical measurement equipment. Currently, there are about six postdocs and seven PhD students working on different memory technologies including resistive switching and ferroelectrics. In addition, we are hosting several visitors, amongst others from DGIST and SK Hynix in South Korea. We are also working together with several collaborators in the US from Purdue University, University at Buffalo, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Professor Andrew Flewitt heads the Electronics Devices and Materials (EDM) Group in the Department of Engineering. The group has a long track record of working on thin film materials for large area electronic devices with a particular emphasis on thin film transistors (TFTs). TFTs are the second most common transistor after the MOSFET, being used most commonly in active matrix displays. However, their applications are broadening to include sensors and logic. More recently, the EDM Group's work has expanded to include other devices for integration into large area electronic circuits, including diodes and memristors. All of these are based on inorganic materials, including thin film silicon materials and thin film metal oxides.
Dr Chiara Ciccarelli and the Microelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory focus on studying spin-dynamics in magnetically ordered materials and spin-charge interconversion down to the picosecond timescale. Our studies include a wide range of materials, from ferromagnets to antiferromagnets to ferromagnetic alloys to materials that have a first order phase transition between different magnetic states like FeRh. The techniques that we use range from semi-DC transport techniques to microwave resonance techniques to time-domain THz spectroscopy.
Professor Manish Chhowalla's group at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy works on 2D materials and contacts to these materials for low-power electronics, which are crucial for energy-efficient neuromorphic applications.