Department of Physics

Staff profile

Prof Damian Hampshire, D.Phil, F.Inst.P

Personal web page

Professor in the Department of Physics
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 43654
Room number: 148
Member of the Durham X-ray Centre

(email at d.p.hampshire@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

  i)   Responsibilities within department

In  2010, I was elected as Head of the Condensed Matter Physics research group - and took up the associated position as Director of the Centre for Materials Physics.

  ii)  Teaching activity

Supervisor for 4 PhD research projects. Lecture course responsibilities are: delivering lectures, setting homework problems, coordinating example classes, setting and marking examinations. 2nd year: Electromagnetism - Maxwell's equations (~ 200 students).

Research Interests

  I) Experiments in high-magnetic-fields:

Members of the superconductivity group in Durham have published some of the most important JC(B,T,ε) data on superconducting materials and developed a new theoretical scaling law which successfully combines phenomenological and microscopic theory.  The physical insights of this work have significantly contributed to the fusion energy programme.  These data characterise the supercurrent density that a material can carry as a function of the magnetic-field, temperature and strain. 

We have also recently installed a 15 Tesla Helmholtz-like split-pair horizontal superconducting magnet system which is unparalleled in the university sector world-wide.  This opens the exciting possibility of making JC(B,T,ε) measurements on anisotropic high temperature superconducting materials - which will be extremely valuable for developing our fundamental understanding and optimisation of new technological applications.

For the best experiments, we combine world-class commercially available equipment (magnets, picovoltmeters,..) with probes that have been designed and built in-house.  Commercial cryogenic equipment in-house includes two high-field magnet systems, a fully equipped PPMS system, a new high-pressure system and a He-3 system.  The world-class high field facilities and instruments are supported by a number of specialist probes designed and built in-house  for making strain, magnetic, resistive and optical measurements on superconductors.  For example, the JC(B,T,ε) data were obtained using an instrument built in Durham for use in  our 17 Tesla vertical magnet system and for use in international high-field facilities in Grenoble, France.  

X-ray diffraction spectra and resistivity of conventional and nanocrystalline niobium

  II) Fabricating high - field nanocrystalline superconductors:

Members of the superconductivity group in Durham pioneered the discovery of a new class of nanocrystalline superconductivity materials with exceptionally good tolerance to high magnetic field.  These materials provide a new paradigm for high-field conductors which has been patented and then published in the premier Physics journals.  Equipment in-house includes DSC, DTA, XRD, glove box, a range of milling machines and furnaces as well a HIP operating at pressures of 2000 atmospheres and up to 2000 C.  The upper critical field in Chevrel phase superconducting materials was increased from 60 T (Tesla) to more than 100 T and in elemental niobium from ~ 1 T to ~ 3 T.  This work involves fundamental and applied scientific investigations into nanocrystalline high-field materials where the important length scales for superconductivity are similar to the length scales for the microstructure and is focussed on fabricating and understanding the physics of this new class of high magnetic field superconductors.

  III) Empirical, computational and theoretical understanding of superconductors:

The boundaries between the best experiments, analysis and theoretical understanding and advanced computation are increasingly blurred.  In addition to experimental work that includes advanced analysis, we have completed computation that provides the first reliable visualisation of how time-dependant-Ginzburg-Landau theory predicts flux moves in polycrystalline materials.  This allows us to address why the critical current density in state-of-the-art commercial materials is still 3 orders of magnitude below the theoretical limit.

Flux flow: http://www.dur.ac.uk/superconductivity.durham/fluxflow.html

The ITER fusion reactor being built in Cadarache, France: http://www.iter.org/

  IV) The ITER fusion tokamak - Fusion Energy: 

Superconductivity is the enabling technology for the $10B ITER (Fusion tokamak) project that the Department of Energy in the USA concluded is the most important large scale project in the world during the next 20 years.  About one third of the cost is the superconducting magnets that will hold the burning plasma scheduled to ignite in 2018. The DOE in the USA concluded that ITER was the USA's first priority facility over the next 20 years:   www.sc.doe.gov/Scientific_User_Facilities/20-Year-Outlook.  About one third of the cost is the superconducting magnets that hold the burning plasma.  The first plasma is planned to ignite in 2018 http://www.physorg.com/news164558159.html. The ITER project will be followed by the DEMO project that will provide 2 GW to the Japanese national grid The roadmap to magnetic confinement. The group has membership of the European magnet experts panel Durham Energy Institute:  Fusion energy - science and technology.

In 2011 Durham secured the contract for the 'European Reference Laboratory - Metrology of Superconducting Materials'.  We have embarked on measuring some of the materials for the toroidal fioeld coils that will be used in the ITER tokamak.   

  V) Energy Transmission and Transport:

Management of energy resources will be one of critical issues in the C21st.  Superconductivity will have an important contribution to make to the development of new technologies.  Durham university is ideally positioned to play a key role in this area. 

American Superconductor - http://www.amsc.com/index.html

Renewable Energy Focus, 2009 - Superconductors and power transmission.pdf 

Maglev train in Japan:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2926400396387878713

  VI) Energy - High field magnets and medical (MRI):

There is a industrial need for superconducting materials that carry higher critical current in high magnetic fields to reduce cost.  Applications include high-field research magnetic for accelerators such as LHC and MRI medical body scanners where higher magnetic fields equate to better resolution. 

MRI body scanner – similar to the one found for example in the hospital in Durham, UK.

Research Groups

Indicators of Esteem

  • Deputy Chairman of the British Cryogenics Council:
  • Director of the Centre for Materials Physics :
  • Director of the European Reference Laboratory :
  • Editor-in-Chief of the IoP journal Superconductor Science and Technology:
  • Head of the Superconductivity Research Group :
  • Member of IoP Fellows Appointing Committee:
  • Member of the EPSRC (UK Government) peer review panel:
  • Member of the F4E (Fusion for Energy) Magnet experts panel :
  • UK member of the Japanese-led international consortium for Applied Superconductivity:

Selected Publications

Journal papers: academic

Show all publications

Supervises