Simon Bending

Biographical Information

• Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader/Professor, University of Bath 11/89-present
  
• Post-Doc, Max Planck Institut FKF, Stuttgart 10/86-11/89
  
• Post-Doc, IBM Research Laboratories, Zürich 10/85-10/86
  
• Ph.D. (Stanford University) 1985
  
• BA Hons. (Cambridge University) 1979

Research Interests

My current research focusses on understanding the magnetic properties of superconducting and ferromagnetic materials at the nanoscale. This work utilises a range of state-of-the-art Hall probe magnetic imaging and nanomagnetometry systems which have been developed in Bath over the last decade, including a new 300mK scanning Hall microscope. The research is made possible through access to the Departmental suite of class 1000 clean rooms equipped with high resolution electron beam lithography, wet and dry etching and various deposition systems. Recent work in the area of vortex matter in superconductors has focussed on the crossing lattices regime in strongly anisotropic High Tc single crystals under tilted fields as well as spontaneous vortex-antivortex ‘molecules’ in superconducting films containing arrays of strong moment ferromagnetic dots. Work on ferromagnetic materials is centered on FIB irradiation of Co/Pt multilayers to realise artificial domain structures, and studying domain wall resistance and current-driven domain wall motion in them.  We are also investigating the magnetic properties of electrodeposited mesoscopic superconducting and ferromagnetic crystals as well as spin-charge textures in hybrid superconductor-dilute magnetic semiconductor structures. Recent work focusses on correlated electron phenomena in exfoliated layered 2D materials with a particular focus on superconductivity and charge density waves.