Current Interests

Markys Cain's current interests follow development of characterisation methods for the performance related properties of electroceramics including ferroelectrics, piezoelectrics, magnetoelectrics (multiferroics) and related materials. Understanding the origins and character of electro-mechanical and magneto-electrical coupling that exists in these materials down to the atomic scale is an important part of this.

His primary interest is the development of in-situ measurement techniques to elucidate the multiphysics properties of functional materials, and some recent examples of this work include the in-situ polarisation measurement systems at two International Synchrotron beamlines: XMaS (ESRF, France) and I11 (High resolution diffraction, DIAMOND, UK).

Biography

Markys graduated with his PhD from Warwick University in 1990 and spent the next two years in the Materials Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara studying thin film epitaxial science. Subsequent research in ceramic composite materials technology in the UK utilised many of the principles learnt at Santa Barbara in the deployment of new interfacial fibre coatings for advanced high temperature ceramic matrix composites for gas turbine applications. Research with an Oxford-based company led to the development of a prototype SEM based instrumented indentation system.

Markys joined NPL in 1997 to lead the Functional Materials Research group. His research activity now includes the development of measurement methods to elucidate materials behaviour in ferroelectric and piezoelectric ceramics and thin film materials, and more recently in multiferroic materials and materials metrology for Spintronics and Energy Harvesting. The focus of the research is materials metrology and Markys has published over 80 peer reviewed scientific papers in the field.

Markys chairs the IOM3 Smart Materials and Systems Committee, and is Knowledge Leader for the Materials Division at NPL as well as Principal Research Scientist and Science Area Leader for Functional Materials at NPL. He is also a member of the Institute of Physics, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials Minerals & Mining and a Chartered Physicist. In 2009 he was awarded the Institute of Materials' Verulam medal for outstanding contributions to ceramic science, and is currently both visiting Professor at Queen Mary, University of London and Reader at Surrey University.

Selected publications (of over 140 publications)

• Magneto-electric properties of multiferroic Pb (Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3-NiFe2O4 nanoceramic composites
  Qinghui Jiang*, Futian Liu, Haixue Yan and Huanpo Ning, Zsuzsanna Libor and Qi Zhang, Markys Cain, Michael J Reece
  Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Comms. (2011)
• Use of a Synchronization Card for XMCD Measurements at the XMaS Beamline
  Bouchenoire L, Brown SD, Thompson PBJ, Hase TPA, Normile P, Bikondoa O, Hino R, Guijarro M, Stewart M, Cain MG and Kervin J
  The 10th Int. Conference on Radiation Instrumentation, AIP Conference Proceedings 1234, 867 (2010)
• Small-scale Piezoelectric Devices: Pyroelectric Contributions to the Piezoelectric Response
  Jenny Wooldridge, John F Blackburn, Neil L McCartney, Mark Stewart, Paul Weaver, and Markys G Cain
  Journal of Applied Physics 107 (2010) 104118
• Crystallographic mapping of ferroelectric thin films using Piezoresponse force microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction
  Martin Lowe, Tristan Hegarty, Ken Mingard, Jian Li, Markys Cain
  Journal of Physics: Conference Series 126, 012011 (2008)

Contact details

E-mail: markys.cain@npl.co.uk
Tel: 020 8943 6599