Profile

I live in Guildford with my partner and our cat, Heidi. I really love reading and my favourite book is ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams. I’m also a keen gardener and baker. Recently I’ve made bread for the first time and I once made crème brûlée macarons which were delicious! My favourite hobby is scuba diving but I haven’t been able to do much since I started my PhD. Pokemon and Animal Crossing are my video games of choice at the moment. I’m autistic and sometimes talk about this online as well as physics.

Our cat, Heidi

The first loaf of bread I made!

Me diving in the Red Sea

I study semiconductors which are the materials that make up computer chips and they make up most of your phone and computer. I’m trying to understand the quantum mechanical nature of semiconductors so that we can harness a property called ‘electron spin’ which could revolutionise electronics. In fact, the field of physics that I’m in is called ‘spintronics’ which is a combination of the words ‘spin’ and ‘electronics’! If we can work out how to reliably control electron spin, we could make technology like quantum computers and it could also make your internet speed even faster.

Here’s a picture of one of some of my devices on a chip:

A photo of one of my devices through an optical microscope

and this is what it looks like compared with my fingers:

Holding a chip with tweezers

Pretty small, right?

I’m developing a new way to create structures in semiconductors using a machine called a ‘focused ion beam’. It looks like this:

The focused ion beam

and it lets me shoot particles at my devices. Sometimes we use it to add layers or little towers of atoms to the device, but usually, I use it to dig tiny holes and trenches:

A tiny hole made using the focused ion beam

This hole has a diameter of 10 micrometers which is less than the diameter of a human hair!

Once I’ve used the focused ion beam to make a new nanostructure (which just means that it’s really, really small), I measure them at extremely low temperatures to study the device. I then either apply HUGE magnetic fields or shoot lasers at them or both to see how the electrons in the material behave under these conditions. This is done using our big superconducting magnet who we call ‘Emily’. Here she is:

Emily the superconducting magnet

The spintronics lab is my favourite place to be on campus. It is a bit noisy though! The magnet system uses a pump to cool down to such low temperatures and it sounds a little bit like a steam train. Here’s a little look around the lab:

Inside Emily, my devices can be cooled to a temperature of around 2 Kelvin which is -271.15 degrees celsius. I can then apply magnetic fields up to 7 teslas to the device which is stronger than the magnetic field of most MRI machines and the equivalent to around 700 fridge magnets. When I want to shoot lasers at the device, I use a series of lenses and mirrors to direct and focus the laser beam.

I use lenses and mirrors for optical measurements

You might have noticed before that there are teeny tiny wires attached to my devices (they’re very hard to attach). It’s these wires which I use to make measurements of the electric current following through the devices. We find that putting the devices to these extreme conditions impacts the behaviour of the electrons inside and use this to understand the electron’s spin.

At the moment I’m spending 2 days a week in the lab and the other 3 working from home. I’ll run through a typical lab day here because they’re my favourite days! On non-lab days I spend most of my time analysing my data, writing scientific papers, reading scientific papers, and doing computational modelling to accompany my experiments.

Here’s what my day generally looks like:

7:00 I wake up and make the first cuppa of the day and feed Heidi before I leave the house!

8:00 I walk into the lab which takes me about an hour. I used to take the train in, but prefer to walk these days.

I work at the Advanced Technology Institute

9:00 Time to start work! I like to get started with my experiments as soon as I arrive as it often takes hours to cool the system down to cold enough temperatures. You might find me using the focused ion beam, working with Emily, or even doing some work in the cleanroom:

Working with the focused ion beam

Me in the spintronics lab!

Post cleanroom selfie. We have to wear lots of protective clothing to make sure we don’t contaminate the room

If you’re curious about what it looks like doing quantum physics research, here are a few time-lapse videos of me working in on various things in labs:

Doing experiments with Emily in the spintronics labs.

Attaching tiny wires to my device chips.

Using the focused ion beam.

Soldering an electronics box I made for an experiment.

12:00 Lunchtime! I always have an hour-long break for lunch and try to go for a walk to stretch my legs.

1:00 Usually back to the lab. At this point, my experiment is usually underway (sometimes the experiments last for days) so I’m just monitoring it. It’s the perfect time to do some coding to analyse some of my previous data or write up some of my results.

Coding in the lab while I monitor an experiment

Then once I’m happy that the experiment is running, I’ll have a tea break and read a paper:

I read a lot of scientific papers!

3:00 Quite often I’ll be finished with my lab work for the day so I might head home at three to work at home (which is a more suitable sensory environment for me than the open office). When I get home, I’ll do more reading, writing or data analysis. Sometimes Heidi helps me out!

Data analysis with Heidi

5:00 The end of the day (usually). I try my best to work from 9-5 so that I don’t burn out. In the evening, I spend lots of time playing with Heidi, cook dinner, watch TV, read and maybe do some knitting. At the moment I’m making a turquoise cardigan.