Rick Hamilton

Materials Research Physicist

Rick Hamilton completed his PhD on Molecular Electronics in 2003 and immediately joined Merck Chemicals Ltd, where he produced several patents on liquid crystal in-plane switching displays, but then moved into the Polymer Electronics group headed by Iain McCulloch in 2005. Seeing the potential in Organic Photovoltaics he took an opportunity at Imperial College London in 2007 to work with James Durrant and Jenny Nelson on the charge recombination in P3HT:PCBM solar cells. Using this experience, he then joined Solar Press Ltd in 2010 with the aim of commercialising organic photovoltaics. Working in a small team they produced 1000s of OPV cells per week and measured and analysed over half a million device measurements on thousands of material formulations with the assistance of the database and analysis system Rick developed.

Rick joined the University of Oxford in September 2016 as a Senior Research Associate to work with Prof Donal Bradley in order to oversee the refurbishment and setting up of new laboratories for the use of the Soluble Semiconductor group. Rick is currently investigating the alignment and conformation change of liquid crystalline polymers in order to create novel device structures for light-emitting diodes.