Prof Alastair Buckley

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Director of Education

Professor of Organic Electronics

Alistair Buckley solar
Profile picture of Alistair Buckley solar
alastair.buckley@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 3597

Full contact details

Prof Alastair Buckley
Department of Physics and Astronomy
E49
Hicks Building
Hounsfield Road
Sheffield
S3 7RH
Profile

I joined the department in September 2008 following 8 years leading research and development in emerging technology company MicroEmissive Displays.

Before that I graduated with a chemical physics degree and a PhD in spectroscopic measurements of discharge lighting.

In industry I was responsible for researching and designing polymer light emitting device architectures and manufacturing schemes for integration with CMOS microelectronic displays (a bit like the ones in Google glass or in virtual reality goggles).

Research interests

Currently I have three complementary research themes relating to energy. Only key papers are given. The first theme covers electrode interfaces, devices and manufacturing processes for polymer optoelectronics and the photophysics of molecular materials. 

This is the backbone of my research, building on my industrial expertise. I have supervised 5 PhD’s in this field. My research highlight is the statistical experimental determination of the distance power law for energy transfer between molecules in a dielectric matrix.

The second theme covers the field performance and integration of PV systems into the UK electricity network.

This research now dominates my portfolio with an industrial contract with National Grid to provide methods to calculate the contribution of PV power on the UK transmission network. The as developed methods are now live in the National Grid control room.

This work has been funded through a combination of research council, industry and higher education innovation funding and as a result of continued grant capture I now direct the largest UK research database of PV performance (Microgen database).

The third theme investigates future energy systems through collaborative knowledge production. This work was completed in conjunction with social science and humanities researchers and is linked to themes one and two.

It attracted a large EPSRC grant following on from University seed funding of a three student PhD network.

Publications

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Journal articles

All publications

Edited books

Journal articles

Chapters

Conference proceedings papers

Reports

  • Holmes H, Buckley A, Chiles P, Gregson N, Krzywoszynska AD, Mawyin J & Watson M (2015) Interdisciplinary toolkit: Getting the most from interdisciplinarity View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
Research group
Teaching activities
  • PHY346 – Group industrial project in physics. This module gives students the opportunity to develop team work skills in the context of a real industrial project with a client organization.
  • PHY248 – Physics with Labview. This is a module in which computer programming is used as a problem solving tool in the context of complex instrumentation problems.
  • PHY337/4437 – Physics in an enterprise culture. This module gives students an opportunity to develop and test their own ideas for business.
  • PHY250 – I teach differential equations as part of the second year core physics module.

I am one of the academic directors of the White Rose Industrial Physics Academy. An cross university project to enhance the skills base of physics graduate for technical industry.

I am an academic lead for the level 2 Achieve More programme. This is a University wide initiative to prove a broader and more interdisciplinary education for all undergraduates.

Professional activities and memberships
  • Director of Education (Sep 2022-present)