Category: News and Events

FaRMS members attended this conference in Annecy, France, from 18^th – 21^st March 2025 (conference photo below).

Dr. Chris Bell gave a talk on “Low temperature physics and materials science of elemental uranium thin films and alloys”, Dr. Lottie Harding spoke on “Revealing the crystal chemistry and dissolution kinetics of doped uranium dioxide nuclear fuel” (pictured below).

Will Thomas presented a poster on “Under pressure to uncover a record T_c in uranium – Synthesis and electrical transport of new uranium hydride phases” (pictured below), and Leo Gilliver’s poster was entitled “Underpinning National Nuclear Safety via the Safe Storage of Legacy Nuclear Waste”.

  

FaRMS alumna Dr. E. Lawrence Bright also spoke on ” Accessing single-crystal U₄O₉ and U₃O₇ using topotactic oxidation“, as well as presenting a poster (pictured below). Our colleague Prof. Claire Corkhill, from the School of Earth Sciences, also spoke on “New insight to U(V) stability in ancient titanate minerals”. Claire also received a Mid-career research award – congratulations!

Since some of us travelled via Geneva, and were able to meet a local cow, and also do some exercise at the airport.

FaRMS researchers were at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, presenting an overview of the FaRMS capabilities to the NNUF network at the final celebratory meeting of all the NNUF Facilities.

Pictured: Dr. Lottie Harding and Dr. Chris Bell presenting to the NNUF network. Photo courtesy of Sofia Leadbetter.

Members of the FaRMS team are authors of newly accepted study entitled “Absence of Induced Ferromagnetism in Epitaxial Uranium Dioxide Thin Films”, in the journal Physical Review B. The paper is in press, but there is a link to the preprint here. First author, William Thomas, carried out this work as part of his PhD, supervised by Ross Springell and Sven Friedemann. All of the samples grown in this study were fabricated using the FaRMS sputtering system, and key x-ray circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements were carried out at the ID12 beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. Congratulations William!

Dr. Lottie Harding, from the FaRMS team was recently at the BM20 (ROBL) experiment at the ESRF, Grenoble. As part of a team from Bristol and Sheffield, the valence states of uranium within a billion year old mineral were being probed.

Pictured above, (left to right): Prof. Claire Corkhill (University of Bristol), Aidan Friskney (Sheffield University),  Dr. Lewis Blackburn (Sheffield University) and Dr. Lottie Harding (University of Bristol).

Members of the FaRMS team are authors of two newly published study entitled. The first is  “Structural properties of epitaxial α-U thin films on Ti, Zr, W and Nb”, in the journal Physical Review Materials. A link to the paper is here. First author, Rebecca Nicholls, carried out this work during her PhD, supervised by Chris Bell and Ross Springell. The second paper is “Epitaxial light actinide oxide thin films“, the Journal Thin Solid Films. First author, Florence Legg, is continuing this work for her PhD, supervised by Ross Springell. A link to the paper is here. All of the samples grown in these studies were fabricated using the FaRMS sputtering system. Congratulations all!