The School of Engineering at London South Bank University is an ambitious and progressive centre of research strength, ranked 25^th nationally for research power in the last Research Excellence Framework. We have a fabulous central London location and are looking for talented potential students interested in research to work with our academic faculty in areas of strength. A fully-funded PhD studentship is available on the topic of materials modelling, beginning in early 2020.

Description: To meet future energy demands in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner, key technologies involving solar and heat energy conversion require significantly enhanced efficiencies. Photovoltaic and thermoelectric devices and associated microelectronics all require semiconductor materials for their operation. Understanding the fundamental properties of such materials will allow design strategies for their improvement to be implemented.

While much work has been done to improve the efficiencies of energy and microelectronic devices in the past, understanding the functional materials in such devices at the fundamental, atomic and scale is crucial for further advances. Point defects, such as missing or additional atoms in a crystalline material, can affect strongly the electronic conductivity, the optical absorption and emission, carrier recombination rates and mechanical and thermal properties. Determining how such defects form in semiconductors, their likely concentrations, associated electronic states and their interactions with mobile electrons or holes are crucial issues when considering the material efficiency and applicability for devices. 

This project aims to develop and apply state-of-the-art computational techniques to model the electronic and optical effects associated with point defects in semiconductor materials used in thin-film photovoltaics and microelectronic applications. First principles methods will be applied to determine the electronic structure of the materials containing defects; ground state properties will be calculated using density functional theory (DFT), while excited states will be investigated using many-body techniques beyond DFT. Methods to simulate interactions between electrons, photons and phonons will be developed and applied. The research goal is to understand fundamental processes involving defects in important energy materials, provide guides for experimental investigators and pin-point routes to improve efficiencies.

This will be a 3-year fully funded studentship for an EU/UK and overseas applicants who are keen to conduct research in materials modelling at LSBU in the School of Engineering.

Informal enquiries should be directed to Dr John Buckeridge ([email protected]). Please send a copy of your CV to Dr Buckeridge before applying. Full details available at:

https://www.lsbu.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/scholarships