Question: What is the most interesting thing you have found out about what atoms are doing from your work?

Daniel Roach answered on 12 Mar 2014:

As part of one of the projects I’m working on, I study the effect of radiation damage in graphite reactors. Now, one of the interesting things about graphite is that it can be separated into sheets, called graphene – billions of dollars/pounds/euros are being spent on research into making new devices with these sheets – atomic-scale microprocessors that use gaps (defects) and impurity atoms in these sheets to make switches made from a few atoms. I’ve recently found out that the movements of these atoms near a defect or impurity really changes, and that this movement affects the electrical and magnetic properties of the sheet. How much this changes will remain to be seen, but it’s early days, yet…