Professor Anthony R West

FRSE, FRSC, FInstP, FIMMM

School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering

Professor of Electroceramics and Solid State Chemistry

Professor Anthony R West
Profile picture of Professor Anthony R West
a.r.west@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 5501
Sir Robert Hadfield Building

Full contact details

Professor Anthony R West
School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering
Sir Robert Hadfield Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
Profile

Tony West obtained his BSc degree in Chemistry at University College Swansea and his PhD at the University of Aberdeen, where he worked with Professor F. P. Glasser on silicate chemistry and was appointed as a lecturer in 1971. He developed a lifetime interest in the then-emerging field of solid-state chemistry with a special interest in the synthesis of new oxide materials, their crystal structures and electrical properties. Awarded a DSc from Aberdeen in 1984, he became Professor of Chemistry in 1989 before moving to the University of Sheffield's Department of Materials Science and Engineering as Head of Department, from 1999 until 2007.

Tony was founding editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry and established the Materials Chemistry Forum, now the Materials Chemistry Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He organised the First International Conference on Materials Chemistry, MCI, in Aberdeen, 1993, and co-organised the first Materials Discussion, MDI, in Bordeaux, 1998. He also served as President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC, 2004–2007.

Tony is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has received several awards over the years, including an Industrial Award in Solid State Chemistry from the RSC (1996), the Griffiths Medal and Prize from the IOM3 (2008), the Epsilon de Oro Award from the Spanish Society of Glass and Ceramics (2007) and the Chemical Record Lectureship from the Chemical Societies of Japan (2009). He was awarded the 2013 John B. Goodenough Award in Materials Chemistry by the RSC, a lifetime award which recognises exceptional and sustained contributions to the field of materials chemistry.

He has authored >450 research publications and best-selling books on solid-state chemistry.

Research interests

I make new oxide materials, determine their crystal structures and measure their electrical properties, which may include ionic conductivity, semiconductivity and resistive switching. 

I work on materials development for lithium batteries to understand the factors that lead to high capacities and long lifetimes and especially, that include the oxygen anion as a redox-active contributor to battery performance. I have long-standing interest in developing the impedance spectroscopy technique to understand the relation between structure, composition and electrical properties of electroceramics and their applications as electrodes  and electrolytes in fuel cells, capacitors and sensors. 

Key research areas:

  • Synthesis and crystal structure determination of new oxide materials
  • Use of phase diagrams to determine mechanisms of doping and solid solution formation and to study polymorphism of inorganic and organic (amino acid-based) materials
  • Electrical property measurements, especially using impedance spectroscopy. to characterise ceramics and measure their conductivity and permittivity
  • Electrochemical testing of materials for possible use as anodes or cathodes in lithium-ion batteries

Key projects:

  • Development of new materials for lithium battery applications, including spinels such as LiCoMnO4, which exhibit a 5V redox couple Co3+/4+ on lithium (de) intercalation
  • synthesis and characterisation of new rare earth ion-doped barium titanate, BaTiO3, which has a room temperature permittivity of ~20,000 when doped with La (In collaboration with Dr Derek Sinclair)
  • Synthesis and characterisation of new solid electrolytes (mainly Li+ and 0= ion conductors)
  • Understanding the structure-property correlations that control the performance of zinc oxide varistors and barium titanate positive temperature coefficient of resistance devices
  • Synthesis of novel oxides with tetragonal tungsten bronze structure with relaxor ferroelectric character for possible capacitor and microwave dielectric applications
  • Synthesis of high purity electroceramics by sol-gel methods (in collaboration with Univ. Jaume I, Spain)
  • Development of novel memristive phenomena for memory and switching applications.
Publications

Books

  • West AR (2014) Solid state chemistry and its applications, second edition, student edition. Wiley. RIS download Bibtex download
  • West AR (1984) Solid state chemistry and its applications. John Wiley & Sons. RIS download Bibtex download

Journal articles

Chapters

Conference proceedings papers

Reports

  • Wu H, Habgood M, Parker JE, Reeves-McLaren N, Cockcroft JK, Vickers M, West AR & Jones AG (2013) Crystal structure determination of a complex pharmaceutical compound using synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction RIS download Bibtex download

Other

Preprints