#MondayMaterials Episode 19 – Aidan Rooney

#MondayMaterials 14th March 2016

Aidan Rooney first came to my attention when I had only been in my role for a few weeks. I was searching around for some PhD students to interview for #MondayMaterials, and whenever I asked someone on the a materials scientist from the School it was Aidan’s name that came up. We originally scheduled an interview back in July, but for one reason or another it didn’t happen.

Then, just a couple of episodes ago, we interviewed Sarah Haigh. It turns out that Sarah is Aidan’s PhD supervisor. Can you guess who she recommended as soon as I asked the question?

You got it – and here he is:

Hi Aidan. It’s great to finally be chatting to you. Can you start by describing your research, for the layman, in ten sentences or less?

My research is involving graphene and other two-dimensional materials.

I’m looking at the world’s thinnest material, but down the thin end. The reason we’re doing this is to see how different materials stack together, how they layer up, and how they delaminate.

And how can your research benefit the public?

So it’s a new field of materials science, called graphene and other two-dimensional materials. And these are envisaged to enter commercial production quite soon – in fact they’ve already found an application in lightbulbs.

They should impact on a lot of areas, particularly in materials science. But saying what they will do for definite is very difficult at this time.

Exciting stuff – it sounds like you’re really getting in on the ground there. So how did you first get interested in your research area?

So I do electron microscopy. I first got interested at the last university I was at when I had a brief project, a couple of months, looking at sol gels and developing nanocrystals. We were able to directly image these using transmission electron microscopy, and no other technique really lets you image nanoparticles. And this is really exciting if you’re a young scientist, and it sort of got me hooked.

And then I came to Manchester and pursued it here.

Brilliant – well we’re glad to have you here! So going back a bit further, can you tell us who or what first inspired your interest in science?

My mum and dad both do fairly scientific subjects. My mum; she’s in the blood transfusion service in Scotland. My dad was a linguist; he looked at old languages and basically had to work out, from current evidence in languages, how those languages might have sounded. And I’ve always been quite interested in that.

So, between the two off them I’d say, yes, science was always on the cards for me.

And what about your other interests? What do you get up to in your spare time?

I usually go the Peak District or Wales. I really enjoy rock climbing and it’s a great part of the country to do that. So we’re out most weekends doing some climbing somewhere – limestone or gritstone. Or if it’s raining we go indoors.

Thanks again, Aidan. Just one last question, then. How has being here in Manchester helped your work and research?

As you know Manchester is the home of graphene, a novel two-dimensional materials that is one atom thick. And it also has perhaps one of the biggest electron microscope centres in the UK. So they have a big range of equipment here, and also they’re buying new equipment all the time.

It was a bit of a shock to come here and find so much equipment – there’s a lot of training time to get on all of it! But it’s been worth it. We’re getting some fantastic results now, and some very interesting publications.

Fantastic, thank you Aidan. I’m glad to hear it’s all going so well and that we’re involved at the very forefront of graphene research. Exciting times. And it was great to finally get together for a chat, hopefully we’ll see you back on the blog in the future.

For the rest of you – thanks for reading. Make sure to come back for the next #MondayMaterials in two weeks time, when we’ll be chatting to none other than our new Head of School, Bill Sampson! Not to be missed. 

Electron microscopyGrapheneMaterials ScienceSchool of MaterialsScienceThe University of Manchester