Prof Martyn Pemble (1955) joined the Tyndall National Institute in Cork in 2004 under an SFI Investigator Award entitled ‘Novel Routes to the Production of Nanoscale Electronic and Photonic Materials via Chemical Self-Assembly and Templated Surface Engineering’.

Prior to this he was Professor of Physical Chemistry and Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and the Environment at the University of Salford. He has published over 140 papers and articles on topics ranging from electrochemical spectroscopic methods to fundamental surface science, through materials growth by MOCVD and CVD, to optical spectroscopy and in-situ process monitoring, to novel photonic band gap materials based on synthetic opals and related systems.

While in the UK the applicant was awarded 13 industrially-linked postgraduate studentships and 12 basic research studentships, 17 EPSRC grants totalling over £2.4M including an EPSRC/DTI LINK programme, 2 major MOD-funded programmes, 7 major CEC funded programmes, approximately 8 periods of beam time on station 13.3 at the Daresbury Synchrotron, 2 periods of time at RAL and 1 at Grenoble (neutron scattering studies of hydrogen in semiconductors) and a period of time at RAL for laser-surface studies. In addition, he has held three major industrially funded awards (Epichem Ltd, Pilkington, totalling £142k). He currently still participates in two EPSRC grants funded in the UK, one of which is the UK’s CVD Network of which he is the Coordinator. Previously he established and coordinated another UK National Network, on ‘Enhanced Semiconductor Surface Processing through In-situ Optical Monitoring. He is also active in 2 current EU-funded projects- PHOTOCOAT, which deals with novel aspects of CVD grown titania and ASSYST, which deals with novel optical in-situ monitoring for process control applications.

He is cofounder and joint Managing Director of a spin-out company from the University of Salford, CVD Technologies Ltd (http://www.cvdtechnologies.co.uk). This company largely deals with high volume, atmospheric pressure CVD coating technology and has been trading since July 2001.

[A selection of some of Prof Pemble’s papers]