Departmental news

A team including Neil Wilson and Nick Hine has visualised the electronic structure in a microelectronic device for the first time, opening up opportunities for finely-tuned high-performance electronic devices.

Physicists from the University of Warwick and the University of Washington have developed a technique to measure the energy and momentum of electrons in operating microelectronic devices made of atomically thin, so-called two-dimensional, materials.

Using this information, they can create visual representations of the electrical and optical properties of the materials to guide engineers in maximising their potential in electronic components.

The experimentally-led study is published in Nature and could also help pave the way for the two-dimensional semiconductors that are likely to play a role in the next generation of electronics, in applications such as photovoltaics, mobile devices and quantum computers.

Steve Hindmarsh, of the Electron Microscopy RTP, was awarded a prestigious Papin Prize at the HETS (Higher Education Technicians Summit) conference in Birmingham on 25 June.

Steve was given the award for technical excellence in supporting a Core Research Facility – The Electron Microscopy Research Technology Platform.

The award was presented at HETS 2019, which aims to share best practice amongst higher education technical staff in UK, Ireland and beyond, and is the largest event of its kind in the country, with over 700 technicians attending.

Professor Phil Woodruff has been awarded the IUVSTA Prize for Science 2019.

The prize was awarded for "outstanding contributions to deepening our understanding of the structure of surface through the development and application of broadly applicable tools now widely available to the surface science community".

The IUVSTA Prize for Science is given every three years to recognize and encourage outstanding internationally acclaimed experimental and/or theoretical research in the fields of interest to the International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications (IUVSTA). The prize will be presented at their flagship conference, the International Vacuum Congress (IVC-21) in Malmö, Sweden July 1-5, 2019, where Phil will give a plenary lecture.

A fragment of a planet that has survived the death of its star has been discovered by astronomers in a disc of debris formed from destroyed planets, which the star ultimately consumes.

The discovery, reported in the journal Science, is the first time that scientists have used spectroscopy to discover a solid body in orbit around a white dwarf, using subtle variations in the emitted light to identify additional gas that the planetesimal is generating.

A facility that allows scientists to use x-rays to examine materials for purposes as diverse as reducing corrosion on metal artefacts to re-growing teeth from stem cells is set for a multi-million pound upgrade.

The Universities of Warwick and Liverpool have been awarded a further £7.2million to upgrade and operate the XMaS (X-ray Materials Science) beamline, which is a National Research Facility. The facility has received new funding from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to further studies into the atomic and microscopic structures of materials and their properties under different conditions at length scales of ten thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.

Fifty new PhD students will tackle pressing societal challenges ranging from nanoscale devices, new catalysts, superalloys, smart fluids and energy from fusion thanks to an investment of £5.5M in funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The newly announced Centre for Doctoral Training in Modelling of Heterogeneous Systems (HetSys) will be based at the University of Warwick and will attract top research talent from across the UK and internationally to the Midlands.

The unique cohort experience and bespoke training programme including transferable computing skills will enable students to work across the departments of Physics, Engineering, Chemistry and Mathematics and the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). HetSys will train enthusiastic students from across the physical sciences who enjoy using their mathematical skills and thinking flexibly to solve complex problems. Engagement from 14 industrial and 12 international partners keen to collaborate with HetSys shows the fresh approach has already resonated beyond academia.

The Centre will be directed by Professor Julie Staunton from the Department of Physics. Speaking about the Centre, Professor Staunton said “The message from our partners is that HetSys is very timely and ideally positioned to have a big impact. Most importantly the key players are the PhD students who will drive the success of HetSys. They will inspire new ideas, approaches and innovation and become future leaders in extending and developing new technologies of national importance.”

Warwick’s Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, Professor Pam Thomas, said “HetSys builds on Warwick’s strong interdisciplinary roots, including the Centre for Scientific Computing and the Warwick Centre for Predictive Modelling. We are excited to be home to HetSys, which will help to promote a collaborative and inclusive research computing culture in the UK and internationally”.

For more information on HetSys see https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/hetsys
contact Julie Staunton (Director) J.B.Staunton@warwick.ac.uk phone 024 7652 3381
or James Kermode (Co-director) J.R.Kermode@warwick.ac.uk, phone 024 7652 8614

Image credit: Gabriele Sosso, University of Warwick

The University has signed an agreement with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) to establish a new framework that enables all interested departments to offer a joint PhD programme.

Physics is the first department to set up a Joint PhD programme under this agreement, organised by John Hanna.

New research by a team led by Dr Farzana Meru has a way of finally telling whether newly forming planets are migrating within the disc of dust and gas that typically surrounds stars or whether they are simply staying put in the same orbit around the star.

A research team led by members of the Astronomy and Astrophysics group had to wait over 100 days for the sight of the first of confirmed neutron star merger to re-emerge from behind the glare of the sun.

They were rewarded with the first confirmed visual sighting of a jet of material that was still streaming out from merged star exactly 110 days after that initial cataclysmic merger event was first observed. Their observations confirm a key prediction about the aftermath of neutron star mergers.

Commenting on the 'blood moon' phenomenon, Professor Don Pollacco of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, said: “The moon, like all planets, gives out no light of its own, but instead shines by reflecting sunlight. Tonight the moon during its monthly orbit of the Earth will pass through the earth’s shadow. During this period as sunlight can no longer reach the moon you might expect it to be invisible but instead a small amount of sunlight reaches the moon after passing through the Earths atmosphere and this light is then reflected off the lunar surface making it visible to us on Earth.

“As the sunlight travels through our atmosphere on its way to the moon the redder wavelengths pass through relatively unhindered while the bluer wavelength are scattered (thats why the sky is blue) by dust suspended in the earths atmosphere. The red light reaches the moon and is then reflected back to us. So the redness of the moon actually tells us about the conditions in our atmosphere.

“Consequently during a lunar eclipse the moon always appears red. Often the moon will turn a blood red colour and be very striking. Tonights eclipse (if we can see it at all because the weather forecast is not promising) is that the moon will rise in full eclipse. So just after sunset the moon will be visible low down in the eastern sky and already be a blood red colour. The full moon often looks larger when near the horizon (an illusion), so tonights eclipse could look impressive.”