Overview
Dr. PK Petrov is the Manager of the Thin Film Technology Laboratory located in the Dept. of Materials, Imperial College London. It is part of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and provides the lead UK Universities and industrial partners with facilities for nano-scale thin film deposition, device patterning and electrical characterisation.
Dr Petrov has more than 20 years' experience in development of smart materials based thin films multilayer structures and devices; more than 70 high impact factor scientific papers, and five patent applications, which are now granted patents (two patents were transferred to Ericsson AB). He is regularly invited to deliver lectures to national and international fora and industrial partners (Ericsson AB, Murata Manufacturing Co., etc.). His most recent achievements, include: development of a method for the fabrication of ferroelectrics based multilayers with atomically sharp interfaces; experimental confirmation of the negative capacitance in ferroelectrics based multilayers at room temperature; fabrication of ultra-thin (10nm) Barium-Strontium Titanate layers with enormous tunability and antipolar switching behaviour; development of a method for nanolithography and fabrication of light manipulating devices and development of a method for deposition of ultra-thin layers on irregular surfaces that could be used for energy harvesting and bio sensing.
Most recently, his collaboration with scientists from King’s College Hospital and King’s College London, resulted in the development of a novel method that uses surface profilometry to quantitate the resorption on bone discs and measure the osteoclastic activity. This method was successfully used to identify a way to reverse the pathological bone resorption in patients with diabetes.
Dr Petrov leads an active research group of 5 PhD students and 2 PDRAs. The group has an excellent track record in winning funding from EPSRC, KAUST and the EU Framework programme.