Professor of Condensed Matter Physics
Chris Marrows is Professor of Condensed Matter Physics, and was previously a Reader in the same subject, a lecturer, and before that an 1851 research fellow, funded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.
His research programme concerns materials and devices for future information technology, in particular devices based on electron spin - so-called spintronics. This involves a wide ranging investigation of nanoscale and thin film magnetic artificial structures, prepared largely by sputter deposition. Such materials are useful in the quest for ever more complex spin electronic devices - systems where the spin, as well as charge, of the electron is used in the storage and processing of information. Current areas of interest are single electron spintronics, spin-transfer torque in magnetic nanostrutures, artificial frustrated systems, magnetostructural phase transitions, and epitaxial graphene.
He has published over 170 articles in peer-reviewed journals since the completion of his thesis in 1997, and is regularly a speaker at conferences around the world. He has published with over 200 other scientists from 70 institutions in 16 countries. His group collaborates widely with universities, research institutions, national laboratories, and companies such as Intel, IBM, Hitachi, and Seagate. As well as performing experiments in the laboratories at Leeds, his research group makes use of synchrotron and neutron facilities in the UK and around the world. Recent pieces of work have been selected as a scientific highlights by ISIS, the Diamond Light Source, and the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in New York State.
He is invited lecturer on Spintronics at the European School on Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies from 2005-2011 - download the slides of his lectures here (PDF, about 170 Mb). He also took part in a Foreign and Commonwealth Office/EPSRC mission on spintronics to China in October 2005, including speaking at a Cafe Scientifique event in Shanghai, about "A Computer on the End of a Needle - How small can IT be?" (more slides to download here - PDF, 1.1 Mb).
He has six PhD students at present, Robert Buda, Sophie Morley, Priyasmita Sinha, Dong Shi, Andrew Strudwick, and Rowan Temple, six postdoctoral researchers, Graham Creeth, Aleš Hrabec, Chantal Le Graët, Serban Lepadatu, Andrei Mihai, and Nick Porter, and Jason Morgan is an EPSRC Doctoral Prize research fellow. In his spare time, he teaches undergraduate courses in Magnetism and Quantum Transport, and is the Condensed Matter Group representative on the School Postgraduate Committee. His favourite element, for both professional and personal reasons, is Co.
© Copyright Leeds 2010