Graeme Blake received his PhD in 1999 inorganic chemistry at the University of Oxford (UK) in the group of Prof. Peter Battle. After a postdoc at the University of Groningen (Materials Science Centre) from 1999-2001 he took another postdoc split between Argonne National Laboratory (US) and the ISIS neutron scattering facility (UK) from 2001-2004. In 2005 he rejoined the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials and obtained a VIDI fellowship from NWO, in 2011 becoming a tenure track assistant professor. He has a tenured position since 2017 in the Nanostructures of Functional Oxides research group. His main research focus currently lies in the chemistry and physics of thermoelectric and magnetocaloric materials, both metal oxides and chalcogenides, with the aim of enhancing performance by controlling the crystal structure, electronic structure, and by nanostructuring. Other research activities include the investigation of multifunctional materials such as halide perovskites and multiferroic oxides, frustrated magnetism, and the use of X-ray and neutron scattering techniques.

Top three publications 2017-2022:

[1] L. Septiany and G.R.Blake, "Magnetocaloric effect and critical behavior in arylamine-based copper chloride layered organic-inorganic perovskite", J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 542, 168598 (2022).

Although the research field of halide perovskites is enormously popular due to their excellent optoelectronic properties, they can also exhibit interesting and useful magnetic properties when transition metal cations are incorporated in the crystal structure. In this paper we showed that layered halide perovskites can potentially act as good magnetocaloric materials, which can form the basis of solid-state cooling devices that are more efficient than conventional refrigeration systems.

[2] L. Septiany, D. Tulip, M. Chislov, J. Baas, and G.R. Blake, “Polar structure and two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnetic properties of arylamine-based manganese chloride layered organic-inorganic perovskites”, Inorg. Chem. 60, 15151-15158 (2021).

Here we proposed a general mechanism by which inversion symmetry can be broken in layered halide perovskites. The breaking of inversion symmetry might lead to improved performance in photovoltaic and optoelectronic devices, as well as a possible new class of ferroelectric materials.

[3] L.D. Kulish, P. Nukala, R. Scholtens, A.G.M. Uiterwijk, R. Hamming-Green, and G.R. Blake, “Structural modulation in potassium birnessite single crystals”, J. Mater. Chem. C 9, 1370-1377 (2021).

Birnessites are a family of layered manganese oxides that are of interest to researchers in the fields of batteries, photocatalysis and frustrated magnetism. In this work we grew the largest ever reported single crystals of potassium birnessite, allowing us to uncover previously hidden features including manganese charge ordering and structural modulation, which might have a strong influence on their physical properties as applied to the fields above.