Prevent colorbar label overlapping with subplots axis

An issue I regularly encounter is the titles for colour bars overlapping with the titles for the y-axis of a neighbouring subplot; and, the title of subplots overlapping with the x-axis neighbouring subplots. I can correct this by changing the size of the whole figure but is there a way of forcing this not to happen?

There image specific things I can do like changing the number of decimal points in the colour bar label or manually moving the position of the labels. But ideally, I would rather have them fixed not to overlap and then change the figure size so I can see the data appropriately.

Overlapping

Larger figure not overlapping

example code I am using

[X, Y] = meshgrid(1:160,1:160);
C = rand(160,160)

label_size = 12

subplot(2,2,1)
    surf(X, Y, C)
    shading flat
    colormap gray
    view(0,90)
    xlim([0 max(max(160))])
    xticks([0, 80, 160])
    ylim([0 max(max(160))])
    yticks([0, 80, 160])
    set(gca,'TickDir','out')
    caxis([min(min(C)) max(max(C))])
    colorbar
    c = colorbar('Ticks',[min(min(C)) max(max(C))]);
    titleString = sprintf('Amplitude (mV)');
    c.Label.String = titleString;    
    axis square
    set(gca,'FontSize',label_size, 'FontName', 'Times New Roman')
    title('(a)','FontSize',label_size)
    xlabel('X (mm)','FontSize',label_size)
    ylabel('Y (mm)','FontSize',label_size)

and this is repeated for each subplot.

[Sudheer Bhimireddy]

Alternatively to the answer given below, you could try changing the colorbar range to follow scientific notation. I say this because of your colorbar range. But editing the position of the subplot itself could be more of a general solution.

The below code will draw two subplots side-by-side and by adjusting the gap_x variable you could increase the gap between the subplots.

subplot('Position',[start_x start_y length_x length_y]);
% plot 1
subplot('Position',[(start_x + length_x + gap_x) start_y length_x length_y]);
% plot 2

Answer 1

[Peng Li]

You can specify the Position property of each Axes to the position you'd like it to be at, instead of using subplot. I found this way better as you can vary your whole picture to have different arrangement, with bigger and smaller axes organized.

For example,

figure('Color', 'w', 'Units', 'centimeter', 'Position', [5 5 18 10]);
axes(gcf, 'Units', 'norm', 'Position', [.1 .6 .3 .35]);
% do some plots here
axes(gcf, 'Units', 'norm', 'Position', [.1 .1 .8 .45]);
% another panel
% etc.

also there are OuterPosition and InnerPosition, check the document to have better sense.