Applied and Plasma Physics, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia.


Professor David McKenzie

> Contact details:

e-mail: d.mckenzie@physics.usyd.edu.au

phone: +61 (0)2 9351 5986

fax: +61 (0)2 9351 7725

room: 441

 Professor David McKenzie
ISI Citations Laureate, 2001
> Biography > What is my research all about?
> Curriculum Vitae > Research highlights
> Publications > News articles

New materials are urgently needed as coatings in a wide range of industries. Advances in medicine are driving the demand for biocompatible high-performance coatings for medical devices, such as heart pumps and prosthetic joints. David McKenzie has invented methods for transporting ionised matter (plasma) by means of magnetic fields and creating uniform, high-performance coatings using plasma beams. More recently he has developed techniques of treating materials with high-energy ions and thereby reducing their intrinsic stress. This is the key to the production of robust, high performance coatings required for demanding applications such as implantable medical devices and high speed cutting tools. These methods are now being used in Australia and internationally.

There are many materials and alloys which have not yet been synthesised. Many of these may have properties suitable for advanced applications. The increasing computing power is opening up the possibility of "fabricating" new materials and predicting their structure and properties in the computer. David has developed computational methods based on quantum mechanics for examining how atoms are bonded in amorphous (glassy) materials. She has shown that the method predicts the behaviour of presently synthesised materials well and will allow the creation of a wide range of new materials by computational methods.


Teaching

> First Year /Waves (PHYS 1901)
> Third / Fourth Year Plasma Physics


Some recent publications (incomplete)

> Plasma-based ion implantation utilizing a cathodic arc plasma, Surface Coatings Technology, vol. 156 (1-3), pp. 136-142, 2002.
> Influence of gas flow rate and entry point on ion charge, ion counts and ion energy distribution in a filtered cathodic arc, Surface Coatings Technology, vol. 156 (1-3), pp. 110-114, 2002.
> Plasma immersion ion implantation using polymeric substrates with a sacrificial conductive surface layer, Surface Coatings Technology, vol. 156 (1-3), pp. 332-337, 2002.
> Influence of gas pressure and cathode composition on ion charge states and energy distributions in filtered cathodic vacuum arcs, Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 83, no. 6, 2965-2970, (1998).