Successful Diamond Light Source proposal

Our Beam-line proposal at Diamond Light Source:

In-situ synchrotron studies of anti-ferroelectric materials for digital data storage

scheduled in the allocation period 23 from Apr 2018 - Oct 2018, has been awarded  6 shifts on I11: High Resolution Powder Diffraction.

EPSRC:Research Grant Success

Our EPSRC proposal:

Anti-ferroelectric materials for non-volatile memory applications

has just been awarded. This grant will facilitate Dr Vopson's travel for five weeks to three overseas institutions, in two countries, in order to perform and receive training on specialized experiments for anti-ferroelectric materials. The partner institutions are: Western Digital, a multibillion $ data storage company based in California, Iowa State University and the National Institute of Materials Physics (NIMP), Bucharest.

Plasma sputtering system upgrade

We are pleased with the completion of the first part of our LabLine Plasma Sputtering upgrade. The system has been improved by adding a second mass flow controller (MFC) to allow the Oxygen / Argonne reactive plasma sputtering of oxide dielectric materials. The second part of the upgrade is to connect the Oxygen gas bottle to the MFC.
The ECLIPSE software has been already upgraded. This is an excellent capability / addition that will support at least two L6 project students this year and one PhD student research.

Our first research paper on KJL LabLine Plasma Sputtering system published

 Physica B: Condensed Matter, Volume 525, 15 November 2017, Pages 12-15

Development of flexible Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ magnetic nano-thin films 

 M.M. Vopson, J. Naylor, T. Saengow, E.G. Rogers, S. Lepadatu, Y.K. Fetisov

Flexible magnetic Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ thin films with excellent adhesion, mechanical and magnetic properties have been fabricated using magnetron plasma deposition. We demonstrate that flexible Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ thin films maintain their non-flexible magnetic properties when the films are over 60 nm thick. However, when their thickness is reduced, the flexible thin films display significant increase in their magnetic coercive field compared to identical films coated on a solid Silicon substrate. For a 15 nm flexible Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ film coated onto 110 µm Polyvinylidene fluoride polymer substrate, we achieved a remarkable 355% increase in the magnetic coercive field relative to the same film deposited onto a Si substrate. Experimental evidence, backed by micro-magnetic modelling, indicates that the increase in the coercive fields is related to the larger roughness texture of the flexible substrates. This effect essentially transforms soft Ni₈₀Fe₂₀ permalloy thin films into medium/hard magnetic films allowing not only mechanical flexibility of the structure, but also fine tuning of their magnetic properties.

Get full text here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VgqF3HWvdxey4

A big welcome to our new PhD students in AML

Two new PhD students have been recruited to work in the Applied Materials Laboratory under Dr Vopson's supervision. Mr Michal Belusky will undertake a full time research project investigating "Deposition of flexible thin films via magnetron plasma sputtering". Mr Andrew Nomuoja will start his part-time PhD on a project involving theoretical and experimental studies of polarization dynamics in ferroelectric and anti-ferroelectric materials. We wish a warm welcome to both new members and best of luck with their research projects.