Jason Riley
Research Interests Dr Riley's research activity concerns the preparation, characterisation and applications of nanomaterials. Colloid chemistry and templated deposition are employed to obtain materials of defined dimension. The as-prepared particles are characterised and then deposited on substrates to yield surface coatings with well defined architecture. The electrochemistry and photoelectrochemistry of electrodes modified using such techniques are investigated. Dr Riley's group consists presently of six Ph.D. students. The group's research activity is supported by both Research Councils and industrial awards, companies supporting the research activity include Procter & Gamble and Hewlett Packard. Other Activities
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Biography
Dr Riley joined the Department of Materials at Imperial College London in October 2006. He moved to Imperial from the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol where, for almost a decade, he had run a successful research group investigating the formation and assembly of nanoparticles on electrode surfaces, a bottom-up approach to nanoparticle modified electrodes. Prior to his appointment as a lecturer at Bristol he worked as a PDRA in the group of Professor Laurie Peter at the University of Bath. Here he undertook investigations of the formation and characterisation of porous silicon, a nanoparticle modified electrode prepared by a top-down approach. Dr Riley was awarded a MA and DPhil from Oriel College, University of Oxford; his doctoral research activity was supervised by Professor Richard Compton. Recent Publications 1. "An Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance in a Channel Flow Cell: A Study of Copper Dissolution" The Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) studies to monitor adsorption and desorption of materials at the solid-liquid interface under well-defined flow conditions were sponsored by Procter and Gamble. The construction and commissioning of a channel flow cell mounted QCM was demonstrated for the first time. The potential of the instrument was illustrated in a study of the corrosion of copper. New insight in to the mechanisms (diffusion and reaction rates) of this reaction was obtained. 2. "Photosensitization of nanocrystalline TiO2 by self-assembled layers of CdS quantum dots" Considerable research resource has been invested worldwide in optimising the absorption spectra and redox performance of molecular dyes for use in solar cells. The synthesis of candidate dyes is often complex and expensive. Our studies have demonstrated an alternative strategy to sensitizing wide band-gap semiconductors. It is shown that molecular dyes can be replaced with semiconductor quantum dots, the electronic properties of which can be tuned by changing the particle size and/or composition. 3. "Synthesis of aligned arrays of ultra-thin ZnO nanotubes on a thin ZnO film-coated Si wafer" Hydrothermal growth of zinc oxide nanostructures on substrates seeded with pulse laser deposited zinc oxide nanoparticles has rapidly become a method of choice for preparing well aligned arrays of metal oxide nanostructures for solar cell, photoemission, sensor and optoelectronic applications. Our pioneering work, in collaboration witrh Professor Ashfold’s group at Bristol, in this area has shown how by controlling the growth parameters it is possible to obtain nanorod, nanosyringe and nanotube arrays. Electrodeposition of metal oxides in nanoscale templates has also been employed as a method of growing nanomaterials of defined dimension. I have recently been invited to lecture at the EMRS Fall Meeting in Warsaw on this topic and write a review article for the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. 4. "Millisecond Time Resolution Neutron Reflection from a Nematic Liquid Crystal" To follow the dynamics of the reorientation of molecules at interfaces I, working with colleagues from the Department of Physics at Bristol, have developed a stroboscopic method of collecting and analysing neutron reflectivity data with time-resolution as low as 400 ms, an improvement of greater than 104. The method was commissioned in studies of the electric field induced director reorientation of a liquid crystal in the nematic phase. More recently the technique has been used to study the mechanism of the adsorption of a small chain surfactant on to a gold interface. The capability to perform the dynamic experiments described in this manuscript is now being incorporated into the new neutron reflectivity instruments being built at ISIS. Consultancies
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