ProfessorBrendan Kennedy

Project Opportunities

Title: Structural and Magnetic Properties of 4d Oxides

Summary of opportunity:

How high can magnetic interactions go?  Using second and third row transition metal oxides we are targeting a class of perovskite materials that could potentially have the highest antiferromagnetic ordering temperatures known.  Bu first we have to prepare crystalline phases.

Opportunity synopsis:

This project seeks to develop novel magnetic materials based on second and third row transition metals.  Conventional wisdom suggests that only 3d metals ( Cr, Mn, Fe, Co etc) are capale of exhibiting magnetism at high temperatures.  Our work on SrTcO3 shows this is not the case and has identified a number of materials that may exhibit extrodinary magnetic materials.  One aim of this work is to prepare antiferromagnetics  with the highest know Neel.  Aspects of this project will be conducted in collaboration with researchers at ANSTO.

Having prepared the crystalline phases, you will explore their properties at the atomic level, by using an array of characterisation techniques including synchrotron and neutron diffraction, X-ray spectroscopy, magnetic susceptibility and heat capacity measurements etc.