Chris Howard
Prof Chris Howard
We create new materials that have desirable functional properties or that exhibit interesting emergent phenomena and we study these materials with a wide range of experimental techniques. Outputs range from nano-textured electrodes for battery and fuel cell electrodes to the discovery of exotic electronic groundstates.
A particular expertise of the group is the ability to controllably dope (add charge carriers to) materials, especially nanomaterials and layered materials, via the addition of guest ions. The doping can drastically modify the material's properties (e.g turning a semiconductor into a metal) and we have also shown can enable the thermodynamic dissolution of the materials in liquids, for example, to form true solutions of 2-dimensional materials.