Ben Britton

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Ben Britton

CEng FIMMM
Ben Britton in 2019 at Imperial College London.jpg
Britton in 2019 at Imperial College London
Born
Thomas Benjamin Britton

(1985-04-18) 18 April 1985 (age 37)
Other namesBMatB [1] [2]
Education Magdalen College School, Oxford
Alma mater University of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
Scientific career
Fields Materials science
Micromechanics
Deformation
Strain
EBSD and HR-EBSD [3]
Institutions The University of British Columbia
Thesis A high resolution electron backscatter diffraction study of titanium and its alloys  (2009)
Doctoral advisor Angus Wilkinson
Website https://www.expmicromech.com/

Thomas Benjamin Britton CEng FIMMM (born 18 April 1985) is a materials scientist and engineer based at The University of British Columbia. He is a specialist in micromechanics, electron microscopy and crystal plasticity. In 2014 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), a society of which he then became a Fellow in 2016. [3] [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Britton grew up in Oxford and attended Magdalen College School, Oxford.[ citation needed ] He graduated with a Master of Engineering (MEng) in materials science from the Department of Materials, University of Oxford in 2007 where he was a student of St Catherine's College, Oxford.[ citation needed ] In 2010, he completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in materials science, specifically for an electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) study of titanium and its alloys supervised by Angus Wilkinson. [4]

Research and career

After completing his PhD, Britton spent two years in Oxford as a postdoctoral research associate studying materials for fission and fusion power. [5] He received a fellowship in nuclear research in the faculty of engineering at Imperial College London in 2012. [6] In 2015, he was appointed a lecturer in the centre for nuclear engineering at Imperial supported by a Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship establishing the "better understanding of materials to make safer reactors". [7] [8] From 2017, Britton was a senior lecturer in materials science at the Centre for Nuclear Engineering. He was the course director of Imperial's Master of Science (MSc) program in advanced nuclear engineering and deputy director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering. [9]

In 2021, Britton has been appointed as an Associate Professor in the department of Materials Engineering at The University of British Columbia. [10] [11] He holds a Visiting Readership at Imperial College London, as well as an Academia Visitor Status at the University of Oxford. [11]

His first PhD student, Vivian Tong, worked on zirconium alloys, and solved a longstanding issue in the zirconium manufacturing sector. [12] Britton develops high resolution microscopy techniques, including forescatter electron imaging for topographic and phase contrast. [13]

Public engagement

Britton has led outreach and engagement activity aimed at changing public perception about nuclear energy, [14] and regularly blogs about early career academic life. [2] He has appeared on the podcast Scientists Not the Science. [15] As of 2017 he serves on the executive committee of Science is Vital, a grassroots campaign formed in 2010 to combat threats to the UK's research & development (R&D) budget. [16] He is a trustee of the charity Pride in STEM, through which he was nominated for the Gay Times honours in 2017. [17] [18] [19] He spoke at the Institute of Physics (IOP) pride of physics celebration in August 2018. [20] In 2018, he was interviewed for Nature's podcast Working Scientist, where he spoke about the advantages of using online platforms that allowed academics to collaborate and exchange ideas more easily. [21]

In his role as deputy director of Imperial's centre for nuclear engineering, Britton was a co-signatory of an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, urging the then-recently elected President of France to keep the nation's nuclear power plants open in order to keep carbon emissions low. [22] He has also contributed written evidence to the House of Lords about nuclear technology. [23]

Britton has also campaigned for the removal of Imperial College's newly-imposed application fee for its postgraduate programmes, citing the policy's detriments against underprivileged applicants. [24] As at the time of reporting, the university has not removed its postgraduate programme application fee policy.

Awards and honours

In 2014 Britton was awarded the IOM3 Silver Medal (Outstanding contribution to materials science, engineering and technology by individual under 30). [25] In 2016 he won one of five awards for the engineers trust's "Young Engineer" of the year, being described by the Royal Academy of Engineering as one of the UK's "future engineering leaders". [26] In 2014 he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM). [27]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electron diffraction</span> Bending of electron beams due to electrostatic interactions with matter

Electron diffraction refers to changes in the direction of electron beams due to interactions with atoms. The resulting map of the directions of the electrons after they have interacted is called a diffraction pattern. It is similar to x-ray and neutron diffraction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Texture (chemistry)</span>

In physical chemistry and materials science, texture is the distribution of crystallographic orientations of a polycrystalline sample. A sample in which these orientations are fully random is said to have no distinct texture. If the crystallographic orientations are not random, but have some preferred orientation, then the sample has a weak, moderate or strong texture. The degree is dependent on the percentage of crystals having the preferred orientation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electron backscatter diffraction</span> Scanning electron microscopy technique

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) technique used to study the crystallographic structure of materials. EBSD is carried out in a scanning electron microscope equipped with an EBSD detector comprising at least a phosphorescent screen, a compact lens and a low-light camera. In this configuration, the SEM incident beam hits the tilted sample. As backscattered electrons leave the sample, they interact with the crystal's periodic atomic lattice planes and diffract according to Bragg's law at various scattering angles before reaching the phosphor screen forming Kikuchi patterns (EBSPs). EBSD spatial resolution depends on many factors, including the nature of the material under study and the sample preparation. Thus, EBSPs can be indexed to provide information about the material's grain structure, grains orientation, and phase at the micro-scale. EBSD is applied for impurities and defect studies, plastic deformation, and statistical analysis for average misorientation, grain size, and crystallographic texture. EBSD can also be combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), cathodoluminescence (CL), and wavelength dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDS) for advanced phase identification and materials discovery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crystal twinning</span> Two separate crystals sharing some of the same crystal lattice points in a symmetrical manner

Crystal twinning occurs when two or more adjacent crystals of the same mineral are oriented so that they share some of the same crystal lattice points in a symmetrical manner. The result is an intergrowth of two separate crystals that are tightly bonded to each other. The surface along which the lattice points are shared in twinned crystals is called a composition surface or twin plane.

Zirconium alloys are solid solutions of zirconium or other metals, a common subgroup having the trade mark Zircaloy. Zirconium has very low absorption cross-section of thermal neutrons, high hardness, ductility and corrosion resistance. One of the main uses of zirconium alloys is in nuclear technology, as cladding of fuel rods in nuclear reactors, especially water reactors. A typical composition of nuclear-grade zirconium alloys is more than 95 weight percent zirconium and less than 2% of tin, niobium, iron, chromium, nickel and other metals, which are added to improve mechanical properties and corrosion resistance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slip (materials science)</span> Displacement between parts of a crystal along a crystallographic plane

In materials science, slip is the large displacement of one part of a crystal relative to another part along crystallographic planes and directions. Slip occurs by the passage of dislocations on close/packed planes, which are planes containing the greatest number of atoms per area and in close-packed directions. Close-packed planes are known as slip or glide planes. A slip system describes the set of symmetrically identical slip planes and associated family of slip directions for which dislocation motion can easily occur and lead to plastic deformation. The magnitude and direction of slip are represented by the Burgers vector, b.

Seishi Kikuchi was a Japanese physicist, known for his explanation of the Kikuchi lines that show up in diffraction patterns of diffusely scattered electrons.

Valerie Randle is a materials engineer who specialised in electron backscatter diffraction, grain boundary engineering, and has written a number of text books on the subject She was Welsh Woman of the Year in 1998 and in the same year was awarded the Rosenhain Award for achievements in Materials Science by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. In 2004 she was invited as a guest of HM the Queen to a luncheon at Buckingham Palace for the 'top 180 female achievers in the country'. From 2008 she has been included in Who's Who. as part of increasing public recognition of scientists. She has made significant contributions in the field of materials engineering with over 150 indexed publications in the field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Midgley</span>

Paul Anthony Midgley FRS is a Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

3D X-ray diffraction (3DXRD) is a microscopy technique using hard X-rays to investigate the internal structure of polycrystalline materials in three dimensions. For a given sample, 3DXRD returns the shape, juxtaposition, and orientation of the crystallites ("grains") it is made of. 3DXRD allows investigating micrometer- to millimetre-sized samples with resolution ranging from hundreds of nanometers to micrometers. Other techniques employing X-rays to investigate the internal structure of polycrystalline materials include X-ray diffraction contrast tomography (DCT) and high energy X-ray diffraction (HEDM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Materials, Imperial College London</span>

The Department of Materials is responsible for the teaching and research in materials science and engineering at Imperial College London, occupying the Royal School of Mines and Bessemer buildings on the South Kensington campus. It can trace its origins back to the metallurgy department of the Government School of Mines and Science applied to the Arts, founded in 1851.

Carol Trager-Cowan is a Scottish physicist who is a Reader in physics and Science Communicator at the University of Strathclyde. She works on scanning electron microscopy, including Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), diffraction contrast and cathodoluminescence imaging.

Electron channelling contrast imaging (ECCI) is a scanning electron microscope (SEM) diffraction technique used in the study of defects in materials. These can be dislocations or stacking faults that are close to the surface of the sample, low angle grain boundaries or atomic steps. Unlike the use of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for the investigation of dislocations, the ECCI approach has been called a rapid and non-destructive characterisation technique

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CrysTBox</span> Free crystallographic software

CrysTBox is a suite of computer tools designed to accelerate material research based on transmission electron microscope images via highly accurate automated analysis and interactive visualization. Relying on artificial intelligence and computer vision, CrysTBox makes routine crystallographic analyses simpler, faster and more accurate compared to human evaluators. The high level of automation together with sub-pixel precision and interactive visualization makes the quantitative crystallographic analysis accessible even for non-crystallographers allowing for an interdisciplinary research. Simultaneously, experienced material scientists can take advantage of advanced functionalities for comprehensive analyses.

4D scanning transmission electron microscopy is a subset of scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) which utilizes a pixelated electron detector to capture a convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) pattern at each scan location. This technique captures a 2 dimensional reciprocal space image associated with each scan point as the beam rasters across a 2 dimensional region in real space, hence the name 4D STEM. Its development was enabled by evolution in STEM detectors and improvements computational power. The technique has applications in visual diffraction imaging, phase orientation and strain mapping, phase contrast analysis, among others.

Angus J Wilkinson is a professor of materials science based at University of Oxford. He is a specialist in micromechanics, electron microscopy and crystal plasticity. He assists in overseeing the MicroMechanics group while focusing on the fundamentals of material deformation. He developed the HR-EBSD method for mapping stress and dislocation density at high spatial resolution used at the micron scale in mechanical testing and micro-cantilevers to extract data on mechanical properties that are relevant to materials engineering.

475 °C embrittlement is the loss of plasticity in duplex stainless steel in the ferrite phase when it is heated in the range of 315 °C (599 °F) to 540 °C (1,004 °F). This type of embrittlement is due to precipitation hardening which can lead to brittle fracture failure.

Fionn Patrick Edward Dunne is a Professor of Materials Science at Imperial College London and holds the Chair in Micromechanics and the Royal Academy of Engineering/Rolls-Royce Research Chair. Professor Dunne specialises in computational crystal plasticity and microstructure-sensitive nucleation and growth of short fatigue cracks in engineering materials, mainly Nickel, Titanium and Zirconium alloys.

David Dye is a Professor of Metallurgy at Imperial College London. Professor Dye specialises in fatigue and micromechanics of aerospace and nuclear materials, mainly Ni/Co superalloys, Titanium, TWIP steel, and Zirconium alloys.

References

  1. 1 2 Ben Britton on Twitter OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg @BMatB
  2. 1 2 "Dr Ben Britton – medium/@BMatB". medium.com. Medium . Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  3. 1 2 Ben Britton publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  4. ↑ Britton, Thomas Ben (2009). A high resolution electron backscatter diffraction study of titanium and its alloys. jisc.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). OCLC   863582584. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.547449.[ permanent dead link ]
  5. ↑ "Ben Britton | Materials for Fusion & Fission Power". mffp.materials.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 11 January 2019. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  6. ↑ "Royal Academy of Engineering honours young engineers". iom3.org. IOM3. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  7. ↑ "RAEng Research Fellowship - Current and recent awards". raeng.org.uk. Royal Academy of Engineering. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  8. ↑ Ford, Jason (4 September 2014). "Materials study aims at improving nuclear reactor performance". theengineer.co.uk. The Engineer . Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  9. ↑ "CNE staff". imperial.ac.uk. Imperial College London. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  10. ↑ "Dr Ben Britton appointed as an Associate Professor at UBC | Imperial News | Imperial College London". Imperial News. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  11. 1 2 "Ben Britton". UBC Materials Engineering. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  12. ↑ "2017 June Wilson Prize awarded to Dr Vivian Tong | Imperial News | Imperial College London". Imperial News. Retrieved 17 October 2022.
  13. ↑ Britton, T. Ben; Goran, Daniel; Tong, Vivian S. (2018). "Space rocks and optimising scanning electron channelling contrast". Materials Characterization. 142: 422–431. arXiv: 1804.08754 . doi:10.1016/j.matchar.2018.06.001. ISSN   1044-5803. S2CID   119457726.
  14. ↑ "Imperial experts share their thoughts on Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant | Imperial News | Imperial College London". Imperial News. Retrieved 8 January 2021.
  15. ↑ Higgins, Stuart (2018). "Season 4, Episode 59: Live at the Imperial Festival – Ben Britton (Bonus Episode)". scinotsci.com. Scientists not the Science. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  16. ↑ "About | Science is Vital". scienceisvital.org.uk. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  17. ↑ "Our Organisation". prideinstem.org. Pride in STEM. 27 November 2018. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  18. ↑ Britton, Ben (2019). "No sexuality please, we're scientists". youtube.com. YouTube.
  19. ↑ Pink, Chris (12 July 2018). "A walk on the Pride side". Chemistry World . Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  20. ↑ Anon (2018). "LGBT+ physicists celebrated at IOP Pride of Physics event". iop.org. Institute of Physics. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  21. ↑ Gould, Julie (1 May 2019). "Working Scientist podcast: Slack, and other technologies that are transforming lab life". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-01375-4. S2CID   164234381.
  22. ↑ "Environmentalists appeal to Macron for nuclear". World Nuclear News . 4 July 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  23. ↑ "Nuclear research and technology: Breaking the cycle of indecision" (PDF). Parliament of the United Kingdom . 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  24. ↑ "Imperial academics call for scrapping of new application fee". Research Professional News. 5 October 2020. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  25. ↑ IOM3. "Silver Medal". www.iom3.org. Retrieved 8 January 2021.
  26. ↑ "Royal Academy honours engineers' early career achievements - The Engineer The Engineer". theengineer.co.uk. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  27. ↑ Anon (2016). "End of year review". iom3.org. IOM3. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
  28. ↑ Wilkinson, Angus J.; Britton, T. Ben. (1 September 2012). "Strains, planes, and EBSD in materials science". Materials Today. 15 (9): 366–376. doi: 10.1016/S1369-7021(12)70163-3 . ISSN   1369-7021.
  29. ↑ Britton, T. B.; Liang, H.; Dunne, F. P. E.; Wilkinson, A. J. (8 March 2010). "The effect of crystal orientation on the indentation response of commercially pure titanium: experiments and simulations". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 466 (2115): 695–719. Bibcode:2010RSPSA.466..695B. doi: 10.1098/rspa.2009.0455 . ISSN   1364-5021. S2CID   2030079.
  30. ↑ Murdock, Adrian T.; Koos, Antal; Britton, T. Ben; Houben, Lothar; Batten, Tim; Zhang, Tong; Wilkinson, Angus J.; Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal E.; Lekka, Christina E. (26 February 2013). "Controlling the Orientation, Edge Geometry, and Thickness of Chemical Vapor Deposition Graphene". ACS Nano. 7 (2): 1351–1359. doi:10.1021/nn3049297. ISSN   1936-0851. PMID   23346949 . Retrieved 8 January 2021.
  31. ↑ Britton, T. B.; Wilkinson, A. J. (1 March 2012). "High resolution electron backscatter diffraction measurements of elastic strain variations in the presence of larger lattice rotations". Ultramicroscopy. 114: 82–95. doi:10.1016/j.ultramic.2012.01.004. ISSN   0304-3991. PMID   22366635.
  32. ↑ Britton, T. B.; Wilkinson, A. J. (1 July 2011). "Measurement of residual elastic strain and lattice rotations with high resolution electron backscatter diffraction". Ultramicroscopy. 111 (8): 1395–1404. doi:10.1016/j.ultramic.2011.05.007. ISSN   0304-3991. PMID   21864783.
  33. ↑ Benjamin Britton, T.; Wilkinson, Angus J. (1 September 2012). "Stress fields and geometrically necessary dislocation density distributions near the head of a blocked slip band". Acta Materialia. 60 (16): 5773–5782. Bibcode:2012AcMat..60.5773B. doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2012.07.004. hdl: 10044/1/13886 . ISSN   1359-6454.
  34. ↑ Britton, T. B.; Dunne, F. P. E.; Wilkinson, A. J. (8 June 2015). "On the mechanistic basis of deformation at the microscale in hexagonal close-packed metals". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 471 (2178): 20140881. Bibcode:2015RSPSA.47140881B. doi: 10.1098/rspa.2014.0881 . S2CID   138085929.
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