Bill David

Last updated

Bill David

FRS
Professor William David FRS (cropped).jpg
David in 2016
Alma mater University of Oxford
Awards John B Goodenough Award
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis Structural phase transitions in ferroic ABO4 crystals  (1981)

William I. F. David FRS [1] is a professor of Materials Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, [2] an STFC Senior Fellow at the ISIS neutron source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. [3]

Contents

Education

David was educated at St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he read Physics as an undergraduate student. He completed his postgraduate work in the Clarendon Laboratory and was awarded his DPhil degree from the University of Oxford in 1981 [4] for research supervised by Anthony Michael Glazer. [5] Following his PhD, he was a postdoctoral researcher supervised by John B. Goodenough in Oxford. [6]

Research

David has made significant contributions to the development of neutron diffraction and X-ray powder diffraction. Highlights include the comprehensive crystal-structure analysis of C60 (Buckminsterfullerene), [7] and the accelerated determination of molecular crystal structures through his computer program, DASH. [8] His theoretical work is based on the application of Bayesian probability theory in areas ranging from structural incompleteness to parametric data analysis. [1]

David's materials focus is in energy storage, beginning with his research on lithium battery cathodes. More recently, he has worked on lightweight hydrogen storage materials [9] [10] such as reversible imide-amide systems. [11] Following his discovery of a new family of ammonia-decomposition catalysts, his main energy research interests are in materials that facilitate the safe and effective utilisation of ammonia as an energy vector. [1]

Awards and honours

Bill's awards include the Institute of Physics C. V. Boys Prize (1990), the inaugural British Crystallographic Association Prize (2002), the European Society for Applied Physical Chemistry Prize (2006), one of three William Lawrence Bragg Lecture Awards (2013) marking the centenary of the discovery of X-ray diffraction, and the John B Goodenough Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2015 recognising exceptional and sustained contributions to materials chemistry. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hydrogen bond</span> Intermolecular attraction between a hydrogen-donor pair and an acceptor

In chemistry, a hydrogen bond is primarily an electrostatic force of attraction between a hydrogen (H) atom which is covalently bonded to a more electronegative "donor" atom or group (Dn), and another electronegative atom bearing a lone pair of electrons—the hydrogen bond acceptor (Ac). Such an interacting system is generally denoted Dn−H···Ac, where the solid line denotes a polar covalent bond, and the dotted or dashed line indicates the hydrogen bond. The most frequent donor and acceptor atoms are the period 2 elements nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), and fluorine (F).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">X-ray crystallography</span> Technique used for determining crystal structures and identifying mineral compounds

X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a three-dimensional picture of the density of electrons within the crystal. From this electron density, the positions of the atoms in the crystal can be determined, as well as their chemical bonds, crystallographic disorder, and various other information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutron diffraction</span> Technique to investigate atomic structures using neutron scattering

Neutron diffraction or elastic neutron scattering is the application of neutron scattering to the determination of the atomic and/or magnetic structure of a material. A sample to be examined is placed in a beam of thermal or cold neutrons to obtain a diffraction pattern that provides information of the structure of the material. The technique is similar to X-ray diffraction but due to their different scattering properties, neutrons and X-rays provide complementary information: X-Rays are suited for superficial analysis, strong x-rays from synchrotron radiation are suited for shallow depths or thin specimens, while neutrons having high penetration depth are suited for bulk samples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium aluminium hydride</span> Chemical compound

Lithium aluminium hydride, commonly abbreviated to LAH, is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Li[AlH4] or LiAlH4. It is a white solid, discovered by Finholt, Bond and Schlesinger in 1947. This compound is used as a reducing agent in organic synthesis, especially for the reduction of esters, carboxylic acids, and amides. The solid is dangerously reactive toward water, releasing gaseous hydrogen (H2). Some related derivatives have been discussed for hydrogen storage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John B. Goodenough</span> American materials scientist (1922–2023)

John Bannister Goodenough was an American materials scientist, a solid-state physicist, and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. From 1986 he was a professor of Mechanical, Materials Science, and Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is credited with identifying the Goodenough–Kanamori rules of the sign of the magnetic superexchange in materials, with developing materials for computer random-access memory and with inventing cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intercalation (chemistry)</span> Reversible insertion of an ion into a material with layered structure

In chemistry, intercalation is the reversible inclusion or insertion of a molecule into layered materials with layered structures. Examples are found in graphite and transition metal dichalcogenides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium nitride</span> Chemical compound

Lithium nitride is a compound with the formula Li3N. It is the only stable alkali metal nitride. The solid has a reddish-pink color and high melting point.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Cockayne</span> British physicist

David John Hugh Cockayne FRS FInstP was Professor in the physical examination of materials in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford and professorial fellow at Linacre College from 2000 to 2009. He was the president of the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy from 2003 till 2007, then vice-president 2007 to 2010.

Jack David Dunitz FRS was a British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer. He was Professor of Chemical Crystallography at the ETH Zurich from 1957 until his official retirement in 1990. He held Visiting Professorships in the United States, Israel, Japan, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium amide</span> Chemical compound

Lithium amide or lithium azanide is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula LiNH2. It is a white solid with a tetragonal crystal structure. Lithium amide can be made by treating lithium metal with liquid ammonia:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M. Stanley Whittingham</span> British-American chemist

Michael Stanley Whittingham is a British-American chemist. He is a professor of chemistry and director of both the Institute for Materials Research and the Materials Science and Engineering program at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He also serves as director of the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES) of the U.S. Department of Energy at Binghamton. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside Akira Yoshino and John B. Goodenough.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium cobalt oxide</span> Chemical compound

Lithium cobalt oxide, sometimes called lithium cobaltate or lithium cobaltite, is a chemical compound with formula LiCoO
2
. The cobalt atoms are formally in the +3 oxidation state, hence the IUPAC name lithium cobalt(III) oxide.

Judith Ann Kathleen Howard is a British chemist, crystallographer and Professor of Chemistry at Durham University.

Michael John Whelan HonFRMS FRS FInstP is a British scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium imide</span> Chemical compound

Lithium imide is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Li2NH. This white solid can be formed by a reaction between lithium amide and lithium hydride.

Michael Makepeace Thackeray is a South African chemist and battery materials researcher. He is mainly known for his work on electrochemically active cathode materials. In the mid-1980s he co-discovered the manganese oxide spinel family of cathodes for lithium ion batteries while working in the lab of John Goodenough at the University of Oxford. In 1998, while at Argonne National Laboratory, he led a team that first reported the NMC cathode technology. Patent protection around the concept and materials were first issued in 2005 to Argonne National Laboratory to a team with Thackeray, Khalil Amine, Jaekook Kim, and Christopher Johnson. The reported invention is now widely used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clare Grey</span> British chemist and Professor of Chemistry

Dame Clare Philomena Grey is Geoffrey Moorhouse Gibson Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Grey uses nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study and optimize batteries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford</span> Department of the University of Oxford

The Department of Chemistry is the chemistry department of the University of Oxford, England, which is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brent Fultz</span> American materials scientist

Brent Fultz is an American physicist and materials scientist and one of the world's leading authorities on statistical mechanics, diffraction, and phase transitions in materials. Fultz is the Barbara and Stanley Rawn Jr. Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for his research in materials physics and materials chemistry, and for establishing the importance of phonon entropy to the phase stability of materials. Additionally, Fultz oversaw the construction of the wide angular-range chopper spectrometer (ARCS) instrument at the Spallation Neutron Source and has made advances in phonon measuring techniques.

The inorganic imides are compounds containing an ion composed of nitrogen bonded to hydrogen with formula HN2−. Organic imides have the NH group, and two single or one double covalent bond to other atoms. The imides are related to the inorganic amides (H2N), the nitrides (N3−) and the nitridohydrides (N3−•H).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Anon (2016). "Professor William David FRS". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 29 April 2016. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 25 September 2015)
  2. "Professor Bill David FRS". Oxford: University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 15 September 2015.
  3. "W I F (Bill) David MA, DPhil: Fellow by Special Election in Physics". Oxford: University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 24 April 2016.
  4. David, William I. F. (1981). Structural phase transitions in ferroic ABO4 crystals (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC   863473643.
  5. "Crystallography tree: William I.F. David, Ph.D., MA". academictree.org. Archived from the original on 15 May 2016.
  6. Thackeray, M.M.; David, W.I.F.; Bruce, P.G.; Goodenough, J.B. (1983). "Lithium insertion into manganese spinels". Materials Research Bulletin. 18 (4): 461–472. doi:10.1016/0025-5408(83)90138-1.
  7. David, William I. F.; Ibberson, Richard M.; Matthewman, Judy C.; Prassides, Kosmas; Dennis, T. John S.; Hare, Jonathan P.; Kroto, Harold W.; Taylor, Roger; Walton, David R. M. (1991). "Crystal structure and bonding of ordered C60". Nature. 353 (6340): 147–149. Bibcode:1991Natur.353..147D. doi:10.1038/353147a0. S2CID   4345630.
  8. David, William I. F.; Shankland, Kenneth; van de Streek, Jacco; Pidcock, Elna; Motherwell, W. D. Samuel; Cole, Jason C. (2006). "DASH: a program for crystal structure determination from powder diffraction data". Journal of Applied Crystallography. 39 (6): 910–915. doi:10.1107/S0021889806042117.
  9. Xiong, Zhitao; Yong, Chaw Keong; Wu, Guotao; Chen, Ping; Shaw, Wendy; Karkamkar, Abhi; Autrey, Thomas; Jones, Martin Owen; Johnson, Simon R.; Edwards, Peter P.; David, William I. F. (2007). "High-capacity hydrogen storage in lithium and sodium amidoboranes". Nature Materials. 7 (2): 138–141. Bibcode:2008NatMa...7..138X. doi:10.1038/nmat2081. PMID   18157135.
  10. Edwards, P.P.; Kuznetsov, V.L.; David, W.I.F.; Brandon, N.P. (2008). "Hydrogen and fuel cells: Towards a sustainable energy future". Energy Policy. 36 (12): 4356–4362. Bibcode:2008EnPol..36.4356E. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2008.09.036.
  11. David, William I. F.; Jones, Martin O.; Gregory, Duncan H.; Jewell, Catherine M.; Johnson, Simon R.; Walton, Allan; Edwards, Peter P. (2007). "A Mechanism for Non-stoichiometry in the Lithium Amide/Lithium Imide Hydrogen Storage Reaction". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 129 (6): 1594–1601. doi:10.1021/ja066016s. PMID   17243680.