Category Archives: Uncategorized

This week, we had to say goodbye to our groups first ever postdoc, Sam as he leaves us for his new job in the civil service. Over the past few years, Sam has been focused on our groups explorations into MOF materials, and their potential exfoliation down to nanolayer thickness. Sam has completed lots ofContinue reading “Sam Leaving”

We were very excited this week to host the first BIRMAC meeting – a strategic partnership between the University of Birmingham and McMaster University in Ontario, Canada in which we aim to form new collaborations and discussions for our shared research interests in quantum materials. Our meeting was held earlier this week, where our group,Continue reading “First BIRMAC Meeting”

Our latest paper has just been published in Physical Review Letters! In this paper, we find that LiYbO2 is the first experimental realisation of a spiral spin liquid ground state in an elongated diamond lattice. This work is significant as it overcomes previous experimental challenges in observing spiral spin liquids and combines magnetic Bragg andContinue reading “New Paper in PRL!”

This week the group attended the UK Neutron & Muon Science and User Meeting (NMSUM23) held at Warwick University. This is the first time the conference has hit pre-pandemic capacity, so was an excellent meeting to get to know other members in our scientific community and listen to all of the talks which utilise theContinue reading “NMSUM 2023”

Tristan was able to attend the 19th annual Durham crystallography school, where he learned about the mathematical basis of which all structural refinements are undertaken. This was an intensive school running from 8am – 9pm everyday providing a real crash course in crystallography.  This training will assist Tristan in interpreting his data as well as understandingContinue reading “Tristan attends the Durham Crystallography School!”

At the end of March, Tristan and Amie were joined by Lucy and Aly at ISIS for an experiment on WISH. This was for a metal-organic framework system Tristan has been synthesising over the past few months, investigating the magnetic ground state down to sub kelvin temperatures. This was particularly exciting for Amie as thisContinue reading “WISH experiment time”

Jen had a fantastic time at the European Conference for Neutron Scattering (ECNS) this week, in Garching, Munich! This was Jen’s first time at ECNS and the biggest conference she’s been to with over 500 participants. Jen really enjoyed all the talks and posters in the different sessions, there’s lots of cool science going onContinue reading “Jen Presents at ECNS 2023!”

Jen was joined by Lucy and Ross this week for some of the first (and only) beamtime after the ILL long shutdown. Jen, Lucy and Ross were aiming to measure the last piece of the puzzle for their ZnV2O4 project, the magnetic ground state of ZnV2O4 on D20. After nearly 18 months of upgrades, theContinue reading “First beamtime at ILL after the long shutdown”

Congratulations to Dr Aly Abdeldaim for his successful PhD viva! Well done Aly, we are pleased to announce that Aly has passed his viva with minors, and is our second PhD student from our group to finish. Aly’s PhD took us on an exploration of exotic magnetism across all dimensions of materials, from the one-dimensionalContinue reading “Dr Aly Abdeldaim Passes his Viva!”

This week we took a group trip to Cambridge to attend the RSC SSCG Christmas Meeting. This was the first time the meeting had been held in person since the pandemic and consisted of two days of very interesting talks and a giant poster session. Lucy gave an invited talk showcasing our work on ZnV2O4,Continue reading “Group trip to RSC SSCG Christmas Meeting”