Materials Science of Functional Oxides

About me

I am Professor of Materials Science in Cambridge and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Materials.  I am Visiting Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and am founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, APL Materials, from the American Institute of Physics (http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/aplmater). I am a Fellow of the  Royal Academy of Engineering, the Materials Research Society, American Physical Society, IOM3, IOP, Women Engineers Society, and the American academy of Arts and Sciences. 

About the work of the Driscoll group

Prof. Driscoll and her group’s research interests are in the area of ‘Energy Efficient Oxide Materials for ICT and Energy Devices’. More details can be found on the Driscoll group website: 

https://driscoll.msm.cam.ac.uk/

To both create and understand new oxide energy devices, we undertake nanoscale design and tuning of thin film materials. Our aim is to improve the performance of the films as well as overcome their complexities in terms of compositions, defects and interfaces. We also create test device structures down to 10’s nanometre length-scales.

We have world-leading growth equipment, principally:
- pulsed laser deposition with RHEED control of growth and in-situ XPS. 
- high temperature oxide sputtering with controlled angle deposition.
- spatial ALD.

We use a very wide range of characterisation tools (materials characterisation and electrical characterisation) within our group and outside the group to learn about the properties of the materials and devices.

We collaborate very widely across the University and the world. Collectively, we bring together the wide ranging skills that are essential to solve some of the most complex materials challenges of our time.  Often the Driscoll (and group) role is to think of the right materials for the desired functional goals, predict how they can be fabricated optimally in thin film device form, and then fabricate them. This is followed by basic understanding of how and why they behave as they do. Our collaborators do many further in-depth measurements and studies.

Images: Self-assembled, triple nanocomposite thin film structure designed and fabricated in the Driscoll lab, composed of a ferroelectric (NBT), a ferrimagnet (CFO) and an antiferromagnet (NiO). The three materials ‘interact’ with one another in a new way.  Their interaction enables the first one-shot, simply grown thin film material to enable, for the first, time, electric field control of the magnetic signal at room temperature. This system paves the way for a new form of  highly energy efficient magnetoelectric memory. Images from our papers: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00584-y and https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0076106.

• Wu R, Zhang Di, Gao X, Zhao S, Kursumovic A, Wang Y, Li W, Jing Q, Zhou Z, Liu M, Wang H, MacManus-Driscoll JL, Self-biased magnetoelectric switching at room temperature in three-phase ferroelectric–antiferromagnetic–ferrimagnetic nanocomposites, Nature Electronics, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00584-y, May 2021;4, 331
• Jagt RA, Andrei V, Rahaman T, MacManus-Driscoll JL, Hoye RL, Reisner E, Long-term solar water splitting and CO2 reduction with stable BiOI-BiVO4 oxide photoelectrochemical tandems, accepted Nature Materials, Mar. 2022.
• Andrei V, Ucoski GM,  Pornrungroj C, Uswachoke C,  Wang Q, Achilleos DS,  Kasap H, Jagt RA, Lu H, Lawson T, Wagner A, Pike SD, Wright DS,  Hoye RLZH, MacManus-Driscoll JL, Joyce HJ, Friend RH, Reisner E, Floating perovskite-BiVO4 devices for scalable solar fuel production, accepted Nature, Mar. 2022.
• Pan H, Lan S, Xu S, Zhang Q,  Yao H, Liu Y, Meng F, Guo E-J, Gu L, Wang RX, Huang H, MacManus-Driscoll JL, Chen LQ, Jin K-J, Nan CW, Lin Y-H, Ultrahigh energy storage in superparaelectric relaxor ferroelectrics, Science, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi7687, Oct. 2021; 374, 100.
• MacManus-Driscoll, JL and Wimbush SC, ‘Advances in processing and application of high temperature superconducting coated conductors’, Nature Reviews Materials, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00290-3 Mar. 2021; 6, 587