The Birchall Centre

The Birchall Centre is home to academics whose general fields of research cover inorganic chemistry and materials science and straddle areas as seemingly diverse as sustainable energy, bioinorganic chemistry, catalysis, polymers, porous materials and surface science. The Birchall Centre fosters an environment in which fundamental and applied sciences across this breadth of fields can both prosper and inform one another.

More information about the history and philosophy behind the Centre and about Derek Birchall FRS OBE, whom the Centre was named after, can be found by selecting the tab above.

The Centre is located in the Lennard-Jones Laboratories and currently comprises 11 academic staff members, 2 postdoctoral researchers and 8 research students. A list of the academics involved in the Centre is given below, for further details please click the name of each academic or for a brief overview select the Members tab in the menu above.

Members

Dr R.J. Darton	Materials chemistry focussing on understanding the relationships between synthesis, structure and applications of functional inorganic and inorganic-organic hybrid materials.
Dr C.C. Egger	Organic/inorganic porous materials, their synthesis and characterisation on several length scales.
Dr C. Exley	The bioinorganic chemistry of aluminium and silicon.
Prof. P. Haycock	Metal-organic chemical vapour deposition.
Dr K. Haxton	The interactions between metal ions and dendrimers or hyperbranched polymers.
Prof. J.A.S. Howell	New applications of food and non-food vegetable oils, organogold compounds for ceramic decoration and gold circuit printing and computational organometallic chemistry.
Dr R.A. Jackson	Computer modelling of inorganic materials, particular those with applications in optical and electronic devices.
Dr R.H. Jones	The use of structural techniques to probe the properties of compounds of importance in inorganic and materials chemistry.
Prof. R.M. Ormerod	Environmental sustainability, focusing on sustainable technology and environmental catalysis.
Dr F.J.M. Rutten	Surface chemical characterisation (including imaging) and modification and novel applications of surface characterisation techniques. Analysis of complex materials.
Dr V. Zholobenko	Catalysis by zeolites and mesoporous materials and their characterisation by spectroscopic methods.