Chemistry

Grant Ritchie is a professor of Chemistry and Head of the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry (PTC) section in Oxford Chemistry. Prior to taking up the latter role he was Director of Graduate studies for 5 years (2015–2020). He leads a group that develops innovative techniques for trace gas detection with applications ranging from fundamental studies of gas phase chemical dynamics to plasma medicine and breath analysis. Part of his research involves translation of these methods into the real world and he works in close collaboration with scientists and engineers in both academic and industrial laboratories, and with physiologists and clinicians both internal and external to the University.

Grant was appointed to a lectureship in physical chemistry at the University of Oxford in 2006 alongside a tutorial fellowship at Worcester College. Prior to that date he had held several prestigious fellowships: a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellowship (2000–2003), a Junior Research Fellowship at St. John’s College (2000–2004), and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2000–2009). He obtained his BA and DPhil from Trinity College Oxford, the latter supervised by Gus Hancock in the area of chemical reaction dynamics. He is currently a member of the NERC peer review college and has authored the text books Atmospheric Chemistry – From the Surface to the Stratosphere (Wiley 2017) and Foundations of Physics for Chemists (OUP 2000).

Grant’s research concerns laser spectroscopy and its use in analytical chemistry and in studies of gas phase kinetics and dynamics. The research is characterised by novel technique and instrument development which not only allows innovative studies of chemical kinetics, dynamics and photon science, but that can also be translated into the real world. Particular areas of interest are healthcare and medicine, plasmas diagnostics and atmospheric chemistry.

Ritchie group website

View all publications on the Department of Chemistry website

I began my career after graduating with a PhD in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde at Hoechst Celanese Corporation in New Jersey, USA where I designed, developed and commercialized functional polymers for a range of optical, electronic, and drug-delivery applications, including a water-based antireflective polymer system for photoresist processes with AZ Clariant. I then moved to ISP Corporation in New Jersey to manage the polymer physics research group, working on developing methodology for rheological surface science and electronic products.

In 2000, I returned to the UK as a research manager at Merck Chemicals in Southampton, where I was responsible for developing semiconducting polymers for organic electronic and solar-cell applications. A key aspect of this research was the exploitation of molecular alignment and organization of semiconducting polymers and small molecules in the liquid crystalline phase. At Merck, my group discovered a liquid crystalline thiophene polymer, pBTTT, which subsequently underpinned many research advances in charge transport of organic thin films since its publication in Nature Materials in 2006, which garnered the distinction of one of the top ten most influential papers published in the first five years of publication of the journal.

In 2007, I joined the faculty at Imperial College London to continue research in organic semiconductor materials. At this time, along with colleague Professor Martin Heeney, I cofounded the specialty chemical company Flexink Ltd, supplying a range of electronic materials to leading manufacturers across the world. At Imperial, I continued to explore new chemistries for organic solar cells and transistors, developing the polymer IDTBT, which exhibits disorder free transport, and an early non-fullerene electron acceptor for solar cells, IDTBR.

I joined KAUST, Saudi Arabia, in 2014 and became Director of the KAUST Solar Center in 2016. This work developing new solar cell materials led to the discovery that a ternary materials blend, with two non-fullerene acceptors, could outperform the equivalent binary devices, leading to high power conversion efficiencies, that helped towards a resurgence in the field. I joined the University of Oxford in 2020, where I continue a range of research activities in the development of organic semiconductors for thin-film transistors, photovoltaics, photodetectors, photocatalysis and bioelectronics.

My research has focussed on using chemical molecular design and synthesis to create new organic materials capable of enabling new applications in optics, electronics and sensors. These materials have specific functionality which can facilitate for example, light absorption to enable new flexible solar cells, detection of metabolites for bioelectronic sensors, electron conduction for transistors, and more recently, enhanced hydrogen production from photochemical catalysis of water.

View all publications on the Department of Chemistry website

My own academic career began in New College, Oxford where I was one of the first female undergraduates (the College is nearly 650 years old). My tutor inspired me to focus on inorganic solids and their properties– a fascinating area of research – and over the years I have investigated a range of materials with applications important in everyday life including transition metal oxides (used in batteries and as high-temperature superconductors) and zeolites (used in many areas including as catalysts, toxic heavy metal grabbers, water softeners and in gas storage). I am currently investigating transition-metal cyanides (in collaboration with Dr SJ Hibble, Oxford). The first example of such a material was ‘Prussian Blue’, which was originally used as a pigment, but is being investigated today, some 300 years since its discovery, for use in batteries and in hydrogen storage. Many cyanides show interesting physical properties, such as negative thermal expansion (NTE), which means that they contract when they are heated. (Most materials, for example, iron railway lines, expand on heating). Cyanides are not just chemical curiosities, but are model compounds for a number of applications (e.g. for the design of zero expansion materials used in optical and computer components in outer space where there are large variations in temperature). Part of our work involves trying to understand and explain why these materials show this remarkable behaviour.

Underpinning all my work is the need to know how the atoms are arranged to make up the structures of these materials. This can be achieved using crystallographic techniques, such as X-ray and neutron diffraction. This is either carried out in a university laboratory or at an international facility, such as the X-ray synchrotron at the Diamond Light Source or neutron sources at ISIS and the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France. Probably the thing that gets me out of bed in a morning is the prospect of determining a crystal structure or arrangement of atoms or that no one in the world has ever seen before – how exciting is that?

Dr Martin Galpin is Director of Studies and Associate Head of Department (Teaching) for the Department of Chemistry. Martin studied for his MChem in the Department of Chemistry at Oxford, before moving to Balliol College in 2001 to undertake his DPhil with Professor David Logan. He continued in the Logan group as a postdoctoral research associate and held a Junior Research Fellowship at Worcester College from 2006 to 2010. In 2011, Martin took up the position of Departmental Lecturer in Mathematics for Chemistry and was appointed to a Supernumerary Fellowship at University College. He became Deputy Director of Studies in 2017, and Director of Studies and Associate Head of Department (Teaching) in 2023.

I have a longstanding interest in teaching maths to scientists. I have a particular interest in developing modern teaching methods to complement more traditional approaches in lectures and tutorials, often through the use of computer software and visualisations to help students explore the subject in new ways. In the University’s Department of Chemistry, I am the Deputy Director of Studies. I chair the Graduate Studies Committee and have responsibility for the Chemistry Department’s central programme of graduate training, and I support the Director of Studies in the running and development of the undergraduate Chemistry course and the undergraduate admissions exercise. My Departmental teaching roles include lecturing parts of the Mathematics for Chemistry course and the MSc in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry.

My longstanding research interests have been in the general area of condensed matter theory, the aim of which is to understand the physical properties of solids, liquids and related phases of matter. Of particular interest to me are so-called ‘correlated electron systems’. The electrons within these materials interact so strongly with each other that they move collectively rather than independently, resulting in the emergence of interesting and complex physical properties. My current research is focused on electron correlations in magnetic materials, and involves both analytical (‘pen-and-paper’) and computer-based calculations using Quantum Monte Carlo techniques. More recently, I have collaborated with other members of the Chemistry Department on a range of problems, including on aspects of biophysical chemistry, the kinetics of complex organic and inorganic chemical reactions, and the statistical modelling of breath acetone measurements for the detection of type 1 diabetes.

For a full list of publications, see Martin’s website

Tim spent his childhood in Sheffield and came to Oxford for his undergraduate in 2015. He completed his part II in the Perkin group investigating the structure and forces present in thin films of water-in-salt electrolyte. He began his DPhil in 2019 and is interested in highly concentrated aqueous electrolytes. Outside of work, Tim enjoys baking and reading.

Max completed his MSc and DPhil at Oxford and was a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick before returning to Oxford as a Post-doc. He has been teaching maths and physical chemistry since his DPhil and is also a Post-doc at Princeton University (remotely) and teaches at other colleges.

Max’s research focusses on the interaction of quantum mechanics and chemistry, namely how quantum effects (such as entanglement) can influence the chemistry of materials and reactions, and how we can harvest such effects to our advantage. On a daily basis, this means dealing with noisy open quantum systems, the current frontier of theoretical chemistry. These systems tend to be very hard to model due to the large number of degrees of freedom within the systems, and the inherently stochastic nature of noise within them. But, understanding how these systems transport energy (usually in form of an electronic excitation) is crucial in order to design more advanced materials, for instance for solar energy capture but also for computing.