Curran successfully defended her PhD viva on the 6th of October – massive congratulations Dr Kalha!

Curran’s thesis covered an impressive number of studies around the behaviour of TiW diffusion barriers for copper-based metallisation schemes in semiconductor devices, in particular for power electronic applications. His thesis is entitled “X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy of Ti_xW_1-x Diffusion Barriers”. Curran published a number of papers based on his PhD work, which you can read here, here, here, and here. Curran’s examiners were Pro Louis Piper from the University of Warwick and Prof Martijn Zwijnenburg – thank you!

Throughout his PhD Curran contributed greatly to the group’s overall activities, particularly with his patient explanations of best practive in XPS data collection and analysis. He (to date) has authored a total of 14 publications.

We are incredibly sad to see Curran leave the group, but he has moved on to greater and more exciting things as Investment Associate with Science Angel Syndicate. We are excited to follow his career and so delighted we could be part of it!