Dr Avtar Matharu

Curriculum Vitae

Name: Dr Avtar Matharu BSc (Hons) , PhD Position: Lecturer in Organic Materials Address: Department of Chemistry University of York York YO10 5DD Telephone: +44 (0)1904 434187 Fax: +44 (0)1904 432592 Email: am537@york.ac.uk

Executive Summary

Dr Matharu was appointed in 2005 by the Department of Chemistry at the University of York as a Lecturer in Organic Materials. Prior to York, Dr Matharu was a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at The Nottingham Trent University, where the Department was rated 'excellent' by HEFCE in 1992. During February 2001 to August 2002, Dr Matharu was granted sabbatical leave to pursue the exciting area of polymeric materials for high capacity data storage as Senior Scientist and Chief Chemist with Optilink A/S, Denmark.

Dr Matharu possesses academic (research and teaching), management and business acumen in the area of materials chemistry, notably liquid crystals and data storage materials, and is aware of the technological, commercial challenges that are still to be resolved. He has presented company research to leading multinational companies (Pioneer, Japan; IBM, USA; InPhase Technologies, USA; AirProducts, USA; Phillips, Holland; CIBA, Switzerland; Bayer, Germany; Samsung, S Korea; Daewoo, S Korea; Optware, Japan), and developed strong research links with the Risø National Laboratory, Denmark and the Danish Polymer Center, Denmark.

To date, Dr Matharu has received both external funding: Central Research Laboratories (formerly Thorn EMI); EPSRC (research studentship, Award No: 96310986); Risø National Science Laboratory, Denmark (collaborative research fellow) and, internal funding culminating in five PhD completions and 19 refereed papers. In 1998, his work on heterocyclic-based liquid crystals was recognised by the Royal Society of Chemistry who awarded Dr Matharu a 'JWT Jones Travelling Fellowship' to visit Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden (Professors Komitov, Lagerwall and Stebler) in order to learn novel techniques.

Dr Matharu has recently (April 2004) been elected as a Committee Member of the British Liquid Crystal Society. He was a Committee Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry East Midlands Section and Chairman of the Nottingham Branch of the-BA. He has organised both National Chemistry Week and National Science Week in the last six months for over 1500 school children.
By using liquid crystal science as a central platform, Dr Matharu brings a holistic approach to the area of Materials Science by embracing academic, managerial and entrepreneurial skills, to the benefit of UK Plc's long-term aspirations as a world leader in both fundamental and applied Materials Science.

Dr Matharu specialises in the design, synthesis and characterisation of organic materials for use in liquid crystal and optical data storage applications. His most recent interest is in recycling of liquid crystals from LC waste.

Liquid crystals constitute the fourth state of matter and generally comprise elongated rod-like organic molecules. Dr Matharu focuses on photoresponsive bent-shaped liquid crystals based on thiophene which unusual and unexpected results. Furthermore, lateral fluorination of such systems produces low melting nematic liquid crystals for potential use in photonic applications.

Information storage is a global problem since the amount of information produced annually is exponential in growth. Currently available magneto-optical materials have reached their storage buffer due to physical limitations imposed by the super-paramagnetic effect and will not be able meet future storage requirements. The simple fact is that present optical storage technology suffers from an absence of functional organic materials that apply to the next generation of commercially available laser diodes (Nichia blue lasers, 400 - 500 nm). Although 'Blu-Ray' DVD technology has arrived with storage capacities ranging from 27-54 GB (operating at 405 nm with 0.85NA), the materials are still to be optimised. Higher storage densities of up to 80 GB may be achieved by depositing several layers of a material which is not ideal due to loss of resolution. An ideal material is yet to be realised. In addition, the future will demand a shift to even shorter wavelengths such as UV so that even high capacities may be managed. Dr Matharu is synthesising novel polyesters and peptides for ultra-high capacity data storage applications.

Following the Waste Electronic and Electric Equipment Directive (WEEE) in 2002, electronic goods can no longer be subjected to landfill, a certain proportion must be recycled. The DTI have funded Dr Matharu to seek new solutions to the recover waste LC from defunct LCD devices.