News
March 2013
Drying Droplets
On Wednesday 6 March the Durham Centre for Soft Matter hosted a workshop entitled “Drying Droplets” organised by Prof Colin Bain and the Innovation in Industrial Inkjet Technology Consortium. The workshop included talks from;
- Professor Martin Shanahan (University of Bordeaux) “Some roles of evaporation in liquid spreading”
- Professor Julian Evans (UCL) “The shape and composition of colloidal droplet relics”
- Emma Talbot (Durham University) “Evaporation of picolitre droplets of binary mixtures”
- Professor Khellil Sefiane (University of Edinburgh) “Hydrothermal waves in evaporating droplets: recent developments”
The workshop was attended by around 50 people representing 8 universities and 8 industrial companies and the talks provoked plenty of lively discussion.
Evaporating droplet of methoxypropanol/water
The movie above (presented by Emma Talbot) shows an evaporating droplet of methoxypropanol/water (50/50 by volumes) containing 0.1% by volume of 600 nm polystyrene spheres at a relative humidity of 0.65. Differential evaporation of two mixture components results in solutal Marangoni flows that recirculate the polystyrene particles inside the droplet.
Liquid-liquid interfaces
On Wednesday 27th March 2013, a workshop on ‘liquid-liquid’ interfaces was organised by Dr Ritu Kataky and Prof Colin Bain and hosted by the Durham Centre for Soft Matter. The workshop addressed a wide range of applications and structures at liquid-liquid interfaces. The workshop included talks from:
-
Professor Hubert Girault, (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) “Electrochemically controlled self-assembly and reactivity at liquid-liquid interfaces”.
-
Alex Hargreaves (University of Durham) "Optical Manipulation of Microdroplet Morphology".
-
Mehrin Chowdhury (University of Durham) “Emulsification at the liquid-liquid interface”
-
Robert Hayes (University of Newcastle, Australia) “Nanostructure in Protic Ionic Liquids”.
-
Professor Rob Dryfe (University of Manchester) "Nanomaterials at the Liquid-Liquid Interface".
The workshop was attended by around 40 participants from a multidisciplinary background and enabled useful scientific discussions. Possibilities for future collaborative projects were discussed.
October 2012
The Durham Centre for Soft Matter welcomes the cohort of 2012/2013
DCSM welcomes a new cohort of PhD students, who will be working on a diverse range of soft matter projects from polymer synthesis to materials engineering, mathematics and physics of flow.
From left to right – Kenichi Kaku, Matt Jones Russell Balster, Brunella Maranesi, Marie Shackleford, Céline Mercier, Kieran Atter, Catherine Blackwell, Rose Simnett, Raymond Rammeloo, Andrew Longstaff, Katherine Howarth. We also welcome Jingyi Zong and Gabriele Benzi who were not present when the photo was taken.
5th July 2012
Outreach Activities
Hamish Hornby and Helen Hartley of Richmond School (with teacher, Katie Dowling) learn to carry out rheology experiments with David Hoyle of the DCSM. The project forms part of the North East Science Industry Partnership (NESIP) project week at Durham which gives school pupils entering their final year an opportunity to spend a week working in a university research laboratory. Previous soft matter projects have included rheology of honey, detecting particular pollution in spiders webs and analysis low friction modified polymer surfaces.
1st May 2012
Durham University has announced plans for the biggest international recruitment drive in its history to build on its position as a leading university for global research and education. The University is planning to attract 50 additional professors and senior academics who are internationally recognized intellectual experts and research leaders in science, social science and arts or humanities. Soft Matter Science is one of twelve research areas identified by the University as being of significant intellectual strength for further strategic investment.
Applications are invited in the following areas:
- Professor/Reader in Complex Fluids (experimental).
- Professor/Reader in Theoretical Soft and Biological Matter.
- Professor/Reader in Surface and Interface Chemistry.
- Professor/Reader in Protein Dynamics and Biomolecular Interactions.
For further information please visit the following website: http://www.joindurham.com/
2nd April 2012
Prof. Colin Bain of the Durham Centre for Soft Matter together with Prof. Jas Pal Badyal are part of a successful bid for a Marie Curie Initial Training Network ‘NANOS3 - Soft, Small, and Smart: Design, Assembly, and Dynamics of Novel Nanoparticles for Novel Industrial Applications’. This project started on 1 April 2012 and will fund two PhD students at Durham. The other collaborating institutions are the Eötvös Loránd Technical University in Budapest, the University of Oslo, CNRS (Paris), Aarhus University (Denmark), KTH (Stockholm), Lund University (Sweden), Bristol University, Proctor and Gamble and LuminoChem
20th January 2012
Durham Centre for Soft Matter members play key role in new Centre of Excellence with P&G, CPI and Peerless
Durham University has recently initiated a £14M research project with Procter and Gamble, CPI and Peerless systems entitled project "CEMENT" - a Centre of Excellence in Methods and New Technologies for Surface Modification and Cleaning. Several Soft Matter Centre members including Lian Hutchings, Neil Cameron, Ritu Kataky, Richard Thompson, Ezat Khosravi and Sharon Cooper are all heavily involved in this exciting new collaboration; each supervising PhD projects or working with post doctoral researchers.
Prof. John Evans (Head of Chemistry Department) said:
"What's particularly exciting about the project is the way in which we can bring a team of academics from different disciplines together to tackle projects which are extremely challenging, scientifically fascinating, but also have significant real-world impact.
"The Durham team of PhD students, post doctoral research associates and academics are really looking forward to working with the CEMENT consortium, and I'm sure that the partnership model of working we've adopted for the project is going to be both stimulating and productive."
For quotes from our partners see: http://www.dur.ac.uk/somuchmore/regional_news/
22nd December 2011
Congratulations to Robyn Moorcroft from the Department of Physics who won the British Society of Rheology poster competition at the recent BSR mid winter meeting. Robyn's poster featured her work on transient shear banding in soft ageing glasses associated with a shear stress overshoot, comparing the strong link between theory and experimental evidence.
11 November 2011
Congratulations to Dr David Hoyle on winning the Bristish Society of Rheology, Vernon Harrison Award, (first prize) in recognition of his PhD work. The prize will be presented at the BSR mid-winter symposium, UCL, 19-20 December at which David has been invited to give a lecture on his research.
29 September 2011
Durham takes delivery of MPR4 Multi-Pass Rheometer. The instrument (ex-Mackley Group, Cambridge) has been installed into the Materials Chemistry building and enables direct observation of polymers and complex fluids under steady state extensional flow conditions.
A tight squeeze. MPR4 finds a new home in Durham
23 September 2011
New Paper in Science from Director of DCSM
Linking Models of Polymerization and Dynamics to Predict Branched Polymer Structure and Flow
Daniel J. Read, Dietmar Auhl, Chinmay Das, Jaap den Doelder, Michael Kapnistos, Iakovos Vittorias, Tom C. B. McLeish
Science, Sept 30 (2011)
The result of 10 years of multidisciplinary work within the academic-industrial "Microscale Polymer Processing" collaboration, this paper shows how new grades of branched polymer melts of industrial complexity may now be designed in silico for their process properties using linked models of chemistry (free radical polymerisation) and physics (molecular rheology).
20th September 2011
Durham Centre for Soft Matter host the International Conference on Advanced Polymers via Macromolecular Engineering in 2013
Dr Lian Hutchings (Chairman), Dr Richard Thompson and Professor Neil Cameron will be organising APME 2013 in Durham. This will be the 10th in the series of international APME conferences and the provisional dates for the conference are August 18th - 23rd. The Durham conference continues a series of successful meetings, the most recent of which were held in Cappadocia (Turkey) (2011), Dresden (2009) and Miami (2007). Further details of the scope of the conference and invited speakers will be released in the near future.
20 September 2011
Dr Richard Thompson has been awarded a three month Knowledge Transfer Secondment to DuPont Teijin Films (Wilton). The project will enable Dr Solomon Kimani to bring his expertise in making functional polymers from his EPSRC project (EP/G032874/1) to staff working at DuPont Teijin Films on a related KTP project.
20th - 24th June 2011
The Centre for Soft Matter welcomes Professor Jacob Israelachvili, University of California at Santa Barbara to Durham University. Professor Israelachvili is visiting the Chemistry Department in Durham as the prestigious “Durham Lecturer” for 2011. He will deliver a three lectures during his visit and spend time meeting members of staff and students from the Department of Chemistry and beyond. Wednesday 22nd June will be a Soft Matter themed day and Professor Israelachvili will meet key members of the Durham Centre for Soft Matter, from across the Departments of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering and over a buffet lunch/poster session will have the opportunity to meet and discuss ongoing soft matter research with postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers.
Further details of Professor Israelachvili’s visit can be found at http://www.dur.ac.uk/chemistry/events/durham_lectures/
14th June 2011
Congratulations to both Lian Hutchings and Suzanne Fielding on their promotion to Reader
9th June 2011
Congratulations to Suzanne Fielding on the award of a European Research Council Starting Investigator Grant entitled "Geometry, instability and activity in complex and biological fluids
1st June 2011
Tom McLeish FRS
Congratulations to Professor Tom McLeish, the Director of the Durham Centre for Soft Matter, on his appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Society. See www.dur.ac.uk/research/news/?itemno=12099 for more details. Professor McLeish is recognised for his outstanding contributions to increased understanding of the molecular and micro-structural mechanisms that underlie the dynamics and flow of soft condensed matter - a class that includes polymers, foams, gels, granular and a number of biological materials.
15th March 2011
Congratulations to Drs Sarah Hardman and Scott Kimmins who both have successfully passed their PhD vivas this month.
The DCSM wishes them the best of luck as they start life in New Zealand!
