[3] At Rice University, he leads a Research Group and has served as Associate Dean for Industry Interactions and Technology Transfer.
[10] After completing his PhD, Barron moved to the United States and joined University of Texas at Austin for his post-doctoral research, which dealt with the chemistry of multiple bonds to phosphorus and carbon.
[14] Building on his research with nanoparticles, Barron founded Natcore Technology in 2004 and joined the scientific advisory board of the company.
In 2013 he was appointed as the Sêr Cymru Chair of Low Carbon Energy and Environment, College of Engineering, Swansea University.
[17] He is also part of the editorial boards of Main Group Chemistry and Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing.
Barron has served on the advisory board of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Zhu Zhou International Research Institute China, and Yellow River Delta Efficient Eco-economic Development.
These structures were spectroscopically consistent with methylalumoxane and he showed that despite being octet molecules they had significant Lewis acidity, he termed this as "Latent Lewis acidity", and showed that this mechanism applied to a number of MAO style polymerization systems.
[19] While investigating MAO-like structures, Barron noticed the relationship between clusters and minerals, at the same time he became interested in metalloxane polymers.
Furthermore, he showed that these metal oxide nanoparticles could be chemically made by a top-down approach from mineral with which they shared their structures.
Through his research, Barron developed a process that forms hollow spheres of ceramic with exceptional crush strength.
[22] In 2010, Barron and his team, on the request of U.S. Navy, developed a ceramic membrane with microscale pores that could filter out contaminants from waters and protect divers' wet suits without getting blocked.
The results of this work demonstrated that inclusion of C60 into a peptide structure drastically lowered any toxicity effects.
[24] In his latest work, Barron has studied catalysis with growth of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs).