Richard Layfield, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the School of Life Sciences

Richard Layfield, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the School of Life Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious 2023 Corday-Morgan Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry for his pioneering work in lanthanide and uranium chemistry, including single-molecule magnetism.

Awarded annually, the Corday-Morgan Prize recognises the most meritorious contributions to chemistry.

Professor Layfield leads a group of scientists at Sussex researching the synthesis, magnetic properties and electronic structure of lanthanide and actinide organometallic compounds. The group’s achievements include the discovery and development of the first organometallic single-molecule magnets (SMMs) and the first SMM to function above liquid nitrogen temperatures.

Prof. Layfield’s work on lanthanide SMMs has implications for the development of molecule-based data storage materials and molecular spintronics. Earlier this year, he was awarded a grant of £1.3 million by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for strategic equipment that will enable a variety of research projects in X-ray crystallography. The new single-crystal X-ray diffractometer, arriving on campus at the end of 2023, will provide game-changing capability, promising to underpin molecular structure research at Sussex and in the South East region.

Prof. Layfield joins previous Sussex Corday-Morgan Prize winners Emeritus Profs Geoff Cloke FRS and John Nixon FRS. As part of winning the Prize, Prof. Layfield will receive £5,000 and a medal. He will also deliver a series of prize lectures at universities across the UK and Ireland in 2024.

On receiving the award, Professor Layfield said: “It is truly an honour to receive this prize. I’m especially grateful to my research students and postdocs for all their hard work over the years, and I look forward to celebrating the prize with my current group.”

Professor Sarah Guthrie, Head of School of Life Sciences said: “I am absolutely delighted to congratulate Prof. Layfield on the award of this prestigious prize. The recognition of Richard’s ground-breaking work is very well-deserved; the School of Life Sciences is proud of his achievements both at an individual level and in contributing to growing our research excellence and capacity in Chemistry at Sussex.”