Academic Director, Sheffield Solar
Email: alastair.buckley@sheffield.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)114 222 3597
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 3555
Research Interests:
- Organic semiconductor devices
- Spectroscopy of organic semiconductors
Alastair Buckley is senior lecturer in physics with research in materials and technology. He has a chemical physics degree and PhD in lighting; 8 years industrial R&D in displays and now a growing interest in energy through PV technology and future energy systems. He leads £1.6m EPSRC cross-disciplinary “Solar energy in future societies” (architecture, physics, engineering, sociology); taking a public-participatory approach to future design and technology for distributed local energy generation.
He studied Chemical Physics at the University of Sheffield, graduating in 1996. He then studied for a PhD, also in the department of Chemistry at the University of Sheffield, applying various laser spectroscopy techniques to measure the properties of gas discharge lamps. A highlight of his PhD work was the construction of a narrow bandwidth optical parametric amplifier to measure the hyperfine populations of thermally and photo-dissociated iodine atoms in metal halide lamps using coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy.
Following his PhD, Alastair worked for one year as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, still in Sheffield, investigating energy transfer dynamics in conjugated polymer blends using newly installed ultra-fast laser equipment.
In 2000 he moved to Edinburgh to work for organic electroluminescent (OLED) display start up company MicroEmissive Displays. During the next 8 years, while working for MED, Alastair was responsible for the research and development activity of a new class of display device based on conjugated polymer emitting materials licensed from Cambridge Display Technology. His technical experience in the OLED field is extensive with particular insight into the integration of OLED devices with display drive electronic circuits, the control of device emission colour, the encapsulation of top emitting devices and OLED lifetime assessment for real-world applications.
Alastair returned to Sheffield to join the EPMM (electronic and photonic molecular materials) group in 2008 when he was awarded a lectureship in Organic Electronics and Photonics. His research is themed around understanding and applying the intrinsic advantages of functional organic materials to a wide range of optoelectronic devices.