Oxford Instruments NanoScience is proud to sponsor the Lee·Osheroff·Richardson US Prize for research in physical science. The aim of this annual prize is to support the career development of young scientists conducting research employing low temperatures and/or high magnetic fields in North America.
Dr Kenneth Burch is the 2012 recipient of the Lee Osheroff Richardson North American Science Prize.
Dr. Burch is an outstanding young experimental condensed matter physicist who has made seminal con- tributions to the fields of spintronics, nanotechnology, and optical properties of novel materials. Recently Dr. Burch’s group has developed a number of novel techniques for producing, characterizing and combining novel materials on the nanoscale. These efforts are opening new paths to the study of a wide variety of effects in high temperature superconductors and topological insulators. In particular Dr. Burch focused on the production of nanocrystals of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8. The Burch group was the first to explain the apparent insulating behavior of these crystals and provide a route to avoid keeping the nanocrystals superconducting [L. J. Sandilands et. al., PRB 82, 064503 (2010)]. His group has extended this technique to topological insulators resulting in the production of the thinnest topological insulators via mechanical exfoliation. Perhaps more interestingly they were able to observe a phonon coming from the surface of these materials, suggesting a new path to study the novel surfaces of these materials[S.Y.F Zhao et al, APL 98, 141911 (2011)]. Dr. Burch joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in July 2008, following his graduate work with D.N. Basov at the University of California, San Diego and his postdoc- toral work as a Director’s Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratories with A.J Taylor.