PhD project: Synthesis of Novel Materials at Extreme Conditions

Project description

The fascination with extreme conditions is also fuelled by the possibility of producing potentially important industrial materials with properties unprecedented in materials produced under ambient conditions. Further, large numbers of modern materials are used in hostile environments that place stringent limits on the performance of mechanical, chemical or biological properties. Extreme conditions provide a different dimension to the synthesis of new materials, acting as an initiator and catalyst for chemical processes that would not happen otherwise. High-pressure synthesis offers a general route to extremely hard materials by bringing the atoms closer together and forcing the short bonds to participate in chemical reaction forming very dense structures. In this project, you will use diamond anvil cells combined with the laser heating, optical spectroscopy (CSEC) and x-ray diffraction (ESRF, France; Diamond, UK) to synthesise and characterise novel materials.

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