Dr Richard Rowan-Robinson
MPhys PhD
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Research Associate
Full contact details
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Sir Robert Hadfield Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
- Profile
-
Richard Rowan-Robinson joined the Department of Material Science and Engineering in 2019. His research is themed around the design of functional magnetic materials, where his current position focuses on fabrication and design of magnetic high entropy alloys.
Richard gained his PhD from Durham University in 2016, and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham (2016) and Uppsala University, Sweden (2017- 2019).
His specialisms are in sputtering, thin film magnetism and magneto-optics, where he is using these skills to design high-throughput experiments to rapidly explore the large composition space available when designing high entropy alloys.
- Qualifications
-
MPhys, University of Leeds 2012
PhD, Durham University, 2016
- Research interests
-
High entropy alloys
These alloys are concocted to have no single base element, instead having many elemental components mixed in near equal atomic proportions. Competing thermodynamic contributions, including a high entropy of mixing, help to stabilise solid solutions with simple crystalline phases. The alloy composition can be further tuned to obtain nanoprecipitation and the formation of ordered phases alongside the solid solution, to influence the magnetic functionality. Richard is interested in combining high-throughput experiments with computational methods for the design of high entropy alloys with functional magnetic properties useful for transformers, inductors, electromagnets and electromagnetic shielding.
Magnetoplasmonics and magneto-optics
Plasmonics allows the confinement of light on nanoscopic lengthscales. When coupled with magnetism, an external magnetic field can be used to control the optical properties of a material through enhanced magneto-optical effects. Magnetoplasmonics combines the fields of magnetism and plasmonics in the realisation of nanostructured magnetic surfaces with applications in telecommunications and biosensing.
Thin-film, interfacial magnetism and spintronics
Exotic magnetic materials can be created by precisely layering nanometer thickness metallic films, creating artificial crystals where interfaces make up a substantial volume of the total material. These can be used to engineer magnetic properties that wouldn’t exist in naturally occurring materials. Such materials have practical significance for the field of spintronics, which aims to understand how the spin of the electron (which is responsible for magnetism) can be used to process or store information.
- Publications
-
Journal articles
- Direction‐sensitive magnetophotonic surface crystals. Advanced Photonics Research.
- Thickness dependent enhancement of the polar Kerr rotation in Co magnetoplasmonic nanostructures. AIP Advances, 9(2), 025317-025317.
- Efficient current-induced magnetization reversal by spin-orbit torque in Pt/Co/Pt. Journal of Applied Physics, 124(18), 183901-183901.
- The interfacial nature of proximity-induced magnetism and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the Pt/Co interface. Scientific Reports, 7(1).
- Tunable Magnetization Dynamics in Interfacially Modified Ni81Fe19/Pt Bilayer Thin Film Microstructures. Scientific Reports, 5(1).
- Precise control of interface anisotropy during deposition of Co/Pd multilayers. Journal of Applied Physics, 116(20), 203903-203903.
- Time-domain detection of current controlled magnetization damping in Pt/Ni81Fe19 bilayer and determination of Pt spin Hall angle. Applied Physics Letters, 105(11), 112409-112409.
- Threshold interface magnetization required to induce magnetic proximity effect. Physical Review B, 100(17).
- Evolution of damping in ferromagnetic/nonmagnetic thin film bilayers as a function of nonmagnetic layer thickness. Physical Review B, 93(5).
- Enhanced electron-magnon scattering in ferromagnetic thin films and the breakdown of the Mott two-current model. Physical Review B, 90(10).
- Direction‐sensitive magnetophotonic surface crystals. Advanced Photonics Research.