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Kenneth Harris

Professor Kenneth Harris

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Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Kenneth Harris

Overview

Current research is focused on understanding fundamental properties of solids and developing new experimental techniques and data-analysis methods for investigating these properties. The three main themes of current research are:

1. Development and application of techniques to allow crystal structures of organic solids (including pharmaceuticals and biological materials) to be determined directly from powder X-ray diffraction data, thus circumventing the need to prepare individual crystals of sufficient size and quality for single-crystal X-ray diffraction.

2. Advancing new in-situ solid-state NMR strategies for monitoring the time-evolution of crystallization processes.

3. Investigating structural properties of anisotropic materials using polarized X-ray beam techniques, with particular interest in developing the new technique of X-ray Birefringence Imaging (the X-ray analogue of the polarizing optical microscope).

Links

Kenneth Harris' Publication List (pdf) 

For more information, click on the 'Research' tab above.

Publication

2025

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Articles

Book sections

Books

Conferences

  • Arora, M., Pineda, S., Williams, P., Harris, K. and Kariuki, B. 2017. Polymorphic adaptation. Presented at: 17th International Conference, CAAD Futures 2017, Istanbul, 12-14 July 2017 Presented at Çağdaş, G. et al. eds.Future Trajectories of Computation in Design. Istanbul: Istanbul Technical University pp. 474-491.
  • Pineda, S., Arora, M., Williams, P. A., Kariuki, B. and Harris, K. D. M. 2016. The Grammar of crystallographic expression. Presented at: Acadia 2016, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, 27-29 October 2016Acadia 2016 Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines: Projects Catalog of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture. Ann Arbor: Acadia Publishing Company pp. 236-243.
  • Sutter, J. P., Dolbnya, I. P., Collins, S. P., Harris, K. D. M., Edwards-Gau, G. R., Kariuki, B. and Palmer, B. A. 2016. Novel technique for spatially resolved imaging of molecular bond orientations using x-ray birefringence. Presented at: 12th Annual Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation - SRI2015, New York City, NY, USA, 6-10 July 2015Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation - SRI2015, Vol. 1741. American Institute of Physics pp. 50009., (10.1063/1.4952929)
  • Williams, E., Brousseau, E., Lavery, N., Mehraban, S., Keast, V., Hughes, C. and Harris, K. 2016. Nanosecond laser milling of the amorphous alloy Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5. Presented at: 11 th International Conference on Multi-Material Micro Manufacture (4M2016), co-organised with 10th International Workshop on Microfactories (IWMF2016), Lyngby, Denmark,, 13-15 September 2016.

Research

Our current research is focused on understanding fundamental properties of solids and developing new experimental techniques and data-analysis methods for investigating these properties. The three main themes of our current research are described below:

1. Structure Determination from Powder X-ray Diffraction Data

While single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) is the most powerful experimental technique for structure determination of crystalline materials, the requirement to prepare a single crystal of sufficient size and quality imposes a limitation on the scope of this technique. For materials that cannot be grown as suitable single crystals, it is necessary instead to tackle structure determination using powder XRD data. However, structure determination using the one-dimensional diffraction data in a powder XRD pattern is significantly more challenging than structure determination from single-crystal XRD data. The challenges are particularly severe in the case of organic materials, and as recently as the early 1990s, no organic crystal structure had been determined directly from powder XRD data. In 1994, we initiated the direct-space strategy for structure solution from powder XRD data, which overcomes some of the challenges associated with structure determination of organic materials from powder XRD data. We develop our own computer software for direct-space structure solution, using a global optimization approach based on a genetic algorithm search strategy. We are applying this technique to carry out structure determination of materials selected from a wide range of scientific fields, including biologically relevant materials (e.g. amino acids and peptides), pharmaceuticals, pigments, and new materials prepared by solid-state processes (e.g. mechanochemical methods, de-solvation processes and solid-state chemical reactions) that intrinsically generate polycrystalline powder samples.

Our current research in this field is also focused on the development of multi-technique strategies that incorporate complementary information from solid-state NMR data and periodic DFT calculations within the protocol for structure determination of micro-crystalline organic materials from powder XRD data, enabling structures of increasing complexity to be determined. Recent research is also incorporating three-dimensional electron diffraction (3D-ED) data within this multi-technique protocol.

2. In-situ NMR Studies of Crystallization Processes

We are currently developing and applying in-situ solid-state NMR strategies for monitoring the time-evolution of crystallization processes, with the aim of understanding the sequence of solid phases (e.g. polymorphs) that are formed as a function of time during crystallization. By exploiting differences in NMR relaxation properties between solid and solution states, this method allows the crystallized solid phase to be observed selectively. We have applied this strategy to reveal the transient existence of meta-stable polymorphs in a wide range of crystallization systems. In 2014, we developed a new in-situ NMR strategy, called CLASSIC NMR (Combined Liquid And Solid-State In-situ Crystallization NMR), which allows the simultaneous measurement of both liquid-state NMR spectra and solid-state NMR spectra as a function of time during crystallization processes. This technique yields insights into the complementary changes that occur in the solid and liquid phases during crystallization from solution. The CLASSIC NMR technique has also been applied to establish the role of amorphous phases as transient intermediates in crystallization pathways.

3. X-ray Birefringence and X-ray Dichroism of Materials

While the phenomenon of birefringence is well established and widely applied in the case of linearly polarized visible light (e.g. in the polarizing optical microscope), the study of birefringence using linearly polarized X-rays has been virtually unexplored. In 2011, our first studies of birefringence using linearly polarized X-rays (from a synchrotron radiation source) demonstrated that, under appropriate experimental conditions, X-ray birefringence depends on the orientations of specific types of bond in materials (e.g. C–Br bonds, when using X-rays tuned to the energy of the bromine K-edge). These early results suggested that X-ray birefringence may be exploited to determine the orientational distributions of specific bonds in materials, leading to our applications of X-ray birefringence to accurately establish changes in C–Br bond orientations associated with order-disorder phase transitions. In 2014, we reported (Science, 2014, 344, 1013-1016) an experimental set-up that enables X-ray birefringence data to be recorded in a spatially resolved manner, giving rise to the new technique of X-ray Birefringence Imaging. In many respects, X-ray Birefringence Imaging is the X-ray analogue of the polarizing optical microscope. Our research has demonstrated that X-ray Birefringence Imaging is a sensitive technique for imaging local orientational properties of anisotropic materials (e.g. the size, spatial distribution and temperature dependence of domain structures), including solid host-guest systems, liquid crystals and mechanically deformed materials. We are also exploring other aspects of the interaction of linearly polarized X-rays with anisotropic materials, including the phenomenon of X-ray linear dichroism.

 

 

For more information on specific projects available with Professor Kenneth Harris please review the Materials and Energy section of our research project themes.

Teaching

CH5101 Foundations of Physical Chemistry

CH4304 Quantum and Statistical Mechanics of Molecules and Solids

CH3307 Advanced Spectroscopy and Diffraction

CH3410 Advanced Magnetic Resonance

Details of modules can be found in course finder.

Biography

Career:
BSc, University of St Andrews, Scotland (1985)
PhD, University of Cambridge, England (1988, Supervisor: Sir John Meurig Thomas, FRS)
Lecturer in Physical Chemistry, University of St Andrews, Scotland (1988 – 1993)
Lecturer in Physical Chemistry, University College London, England (1993 – 1995)
Professor of Structural Chemistry, University of Birmingham, England (1995 – 2003)
Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University, Wales (2003 – present)

Honours and Awards:
Member of Academia Europaea (2013)
Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (2011)
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008)
Tilden Medal (2007/8; Royal Society of Chemistry)
Structural Chemistry Medal (2001; Royal Society of Chemistry)
Corday-Morgan Medal (1999; Royal Society of Chemistry)
Philips Prize in Physical Crystallography (1997; British Crystallographic Association and Institute of Physics)
Marlow Medal (1996; Royal Society of Chemistry)
Meldola Medal (1991; Royal Society of Chemistry)

International Appointments:
Visiting Professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain (1997 and 1999)
Visiting Professor, National Science Council of Taiwan (1998)
Visiting Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (2000)
Patrick Lecturer, Kansas State University, USA (2003)
Visiting Professor, University of Bordeaux, France (2006/7 and 2008/9)
Visiting Professor, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan (2008)
Visiting Professor, Kyoto University, Japan (2011 and 2014)
Visiting Scientist, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (2016)
Visiting Professor, ShanghaiTech University, China (2019)

 

Supervisions

Current supervision

Sam Lewis

Sam Lewis

Debashish Das

Debashish Das

Rose Gauttier

Rose Gauttier

Neo Lecointre

Neo Lecointre

Abrar Almetahr

Abrar Almetahr

Stefano Elli

Stefano Elli

Contact Details

Email HarrisKDM@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone +44 29208 70133
Novel experimental strategy elucidates complex crystal structure

Novel experimental strategy elucidates complex crystal structure

24 May 2017

Exploiting Powder X-ray Diffraction to Complete the Set of Crystal Structures of the 20 “Common” Amino Acids

Exploiting Powder X-ray Diffraction to Complete the Set of Crystal Structures of the 20 “Common” Amino Acids

13 March 2015

External profiles