James Aldous
University of Warwick

Links

Recent News

  • November 2009
    I embarked on my third trip this year to the NSLS to undertake more XMCD experiments. This is likely to be my final trip to the NSLS, although we do have more scheduled beamtime in the next allocation period.
  • September 2009
    I have recently attended a DFT summer school hosted by Psi-K. The course was 6 days long and took place at Bristol University, England.
  • March 2009
    I have been invited by Dr Tom Hase of Warwick University to go with him to the NSLS in April to perform some XMCD experiments. I have, naturally, accepted the invitation!

Contact

  • j.d.aldous@warwick.ac.uk

Welcome to the personal webpages of James Aldous

I am currently a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the Surfaces and Thin Films research group in the department of Physics at the University of Warwick, England. I commenced the PhD in July 2007 and am being supervised by Dr Gavin Bell on a research project investigating the growth and surface structures of compound ferromagnetic metals on III-V semiconductors. This work was started by Gavin's previous Ph.D. student, Dr Stuart Hatfield, who is now working for a scientific consultancy company near Cambridge.

Prior to starting my Ph.D. I completed an MPhys degree at Warwick, graduating in July 2007. My final year project was dedicated to looking at the (physical) passivation of III-V semiconductors using ex-situ wet chemical etching with ammonium polysulfide. LEED and SEM were the primary techniques used to monitor changes in the surface structure and morphology. Also, in the summer of 2006 I undertook a project to investigate the self-organisation of nano-scale features formed on GaAs, InP, InSb and GaSb through ion beam sputtering. The aim was to find a recipe we could use to form nano-scale templates onto which other materials could be deposited using MBE. SEM and AFM were principally used to characterise surface morphology and surface roughness. Both of these projects were undertaken in the surface physics group at Warwick and supervised by Gavin.

Outside of my research, I'm a keen player of squash and badminton and enjoy listening to music from a wide variety of genres. I have been trying to teach myself the guitar for a number of years, but with limited success to date (unfortunately!). I'm also learning Dutch - an odd if surprisingly enjoyable passtime. I also demonstrate in the first year labs and electronic labs, which again I find enjoyable and quite entertaining.

If any reader would like to know more about me or my research, then feel free to contact me using the details to the left. I am also interested to know what people think of this website (I'm particularly interested to know how this site looks in different browsers), so any and all comments are welcome and appreciated.

Last Updated:   14/03/09