My research interests lie primarily in the area of interface science – that is understanding the reactions occurring at the interfaces between materials and their environment. This involves developing new reaction environments that enable interface-sensitive probes to be applied in high pressure or liquid environments, and using these techniques to understand both desirable and unwanted reactions that occur at the interfaces between functional materials during operation. This includes electrode-electrolyte interfaces in rechargeable batteries, the surfaces of heterogeneous catalyst materials in gas and liquid environments, and two-dimensional materials growing on top of flat substrates. The group regularly uses X-ray and Neutron sources available at central user facilities, but we are interested in any approach that can tackle the scientific question at hand.
Rob is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials, and a Tutorial Fellow of the Queen’s College, University of Oxford. He received a PhD from University of Cambridge (2013) for work on “In Situ Studies of Catalytic Graphene Growth” with Prof. Stephan Hofmann. He went on to a stipendiary research fellowship by St. John’s College, Cambridge (2013-2017) during which he spent two years in the USA as a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow (2015-2017) at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory hosted by Prof. Miquel Salmeron. This involved the development of new methods to extend X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy to the atmospheric pressure regime, in order to study solid-liquid and solid-gas interfaces. After a brief return to Cambridge, working in the group of Prof. Clare Grey on anodes for Li-ion batteries, he became a Diamond-Manchester research fellow (2018-2019) based at Diamond Light Source on the Harwell campus. He took up his current position at Oxford in October 2019, and continues to work extensively at facilities on the Harwell campus. He holds a visiting scientist position at Diamond Light Source and is a CAMS-UK Fellow (2019).
Department of Materials, University of Oxford
Rex Richards Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PH, UK
