News

March 2003 - £1.7M funding from EPSRC for Structural Physics programme

Prof Richard Nelmes, Dr Malcolm McMahon and Dr John Loveday have recently been awarded £1.7M funding from EPSRC for the next phase of the Structural Physics programme. The plan is to exploit recent developments in growth of large diamonds to develop single-crystal neutron diffraction studies and advance neutron work towards pressures of 1 million atmospheres. They will extend the range of temperatures for x-ray work at high P-T and develop laser-heating techniques to study elemental metals in their liquid phases under high pressure. These and other techniques will be applied to a wide range of new work including quantum disorder in solid hydrogen, novel incommensurate and host-guest structures in metals, liquid and amorphous states, hydrocarbons relevant to fundamental biology and Earth processes, and novel metal alloys and other new materials