Richard Dixey awarded the 2020 Malvern Panalytical Thesis Prize for Physical Crystallography
The MEE group would like to congratulate Dr Richard Dixey for the award of the 2020 Malvern Panalytical Thesis prize for Physical Crystallography. This thesis prize is awarded annually by the joint Physical Crystallography group of the British Crystallographic Society and the Structural Condensed Matter Physics group of the Institute of Physics. It is given to the PhD graduate with the best thesis in which physical crystallography plays a central part and requires work that is of interest over and above the structural characterisation itself.
In Richard’s case the prize was awarded for his thesis “1D Ising Chains in Frustrated Magnetocaloric Frameworks”, which described how magnetic cooling materials can be optimised for use at liquid helium temperatures (4-20 K) when in cycled magnetic fields that can be generated by a permanent magnet. Their potential use as a new more efficient method for cryogenic cooling is important in the context of the greatly increasing cost and scarcity of liquid He, which is used for low temperature cooling that supports key aspects of modern society including medical imaging, defense sensing and helium liquification.
Richard’s work extensively used neutron scattering to understand the origins of the functional properties of the cooling materials on which he worked, giving rise to design rules that allow the targetting of improved materials utilising their 1D ferromagnetic and frustrated antiferromagnetic interactions. This included challenging studies of the average magnetic structure of fascinating materials under applied magnetic fields and, unusually, local magnetic structure of the paramagnetic phases; understanding magnetocalorics under such conditions is key to enhancing their functionality.
Richard’s award of the prize reflects the excellent quality of both the research he performed and thesis written. His award is particularly noteable as it is the first time the prize has been awarded to a candidate outside of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in seven years and the first to a non-Russell group university. This highlights the world leading research carried out in the Materials for Energy and Electronics (MEE) group at Kent. Richard was the first PhD student supervised by Paul Saines, MEE group leader at Kent. Richard will give a prize talk at a meeting on the 26th of April at 4 pm via Zoom.