Rate My Professor Richard Layfield

Richard Layfield is Professor of Chemistry (Inorganic Chemistry) in the Department of Chemistry, School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex. He graduated with an MChem in Chemistry from the University of Leeds and completed his PhD in main group organometallic chemistry at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Dominic Wright. Layfield held academic appointments at the University of Cambridge and the University of Manchester, where he was Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry from 2007 to 2013, Reader in 2013, and Professor from 2015 to 2018 before joining the University of Sussex as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 2018. His research centers on the synthesis, magnetic properties, and electronic structure of lanthanide and actinide organometallic compounds.

The Layfield group has discovered and developed the first organometallic single-molecule magnets, including the first such magnet to function above liquid nitrogen temperatures. Key publications include "Magnetic hysteresis up to 80 kelvin in a dysprosium metallocene single-molecule magnet" (Science, 2018), "Organometallic single-molecule magnets" (Organometallics, 2014), and "Main Group Chemistry at the Interface with Molecular Magnetism" (Chemical Reviews, 2019). Layfield received the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in 2021 and the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Prize in 2023 for pioneering work in lanthanide and uranium chemistry, including single-molecule magnetism. He has supervised over 35 graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows, with funding from the EPSRC, European Union, Royal Society, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His work has advanced the understanding of structure-property relationships in molecular magnetism with potential for nanoscale device applications.