Curran Kalha joined the group last week and will be undertaking a PhD in the X-ray spectroscopy of multilayer structures particularly concerning materials for power electronics. He is starting his PhD with his first beamtime at beamline I09 at Diamond Light Source studying metallisation systems for power electronics this week. His PhD project will focus on developing and establishing measurement protocols for these important multilayer systems and he will make extensive use of XPS, HAXPES, AR-HAXPES, and XAS.

Curran graduated with an Integrated Master’s degree in Chemical and Process Engineering from the University of Leeds in 2019. During his third year of study, Curran worked on a project in association with Proctorand Gamble, to design a new processing route for the manufacture of high bulkdensity detergent powder. During this project, Curran gained experience in the field of powder research, both theoretically and experimentally. This experience led him to an industrial placement at the Ministry of Defence, wherehe switched working with detergent powder for energetic formulations. Here he developed the process route and characterisation protocol for a new PBX formulation. Curran’s work was selected for presentation at the 49th International Annual Conference of the Fraunhofer ICT on Energetic Materials. After completing the year placement, Curran developed an interest in developing and characterising new materials. Upon returning to university, Curran decided to focus his master’s research on investigating the synthesis of garnet oxide materials for all-solid-state Li-ion batteries using various sol-gel processing techniques.