Author: ThorneyworkA

Our recent ArXiv paper exploring how careful analysis of ionic current fluctuations can be used to probe polymer adsorption in nanopores has a new home in PRL! Super excited to see this appear as the result of a fantastic cross-disciplinary collaboration. 

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.137801

Our new paper investigating the noise signatures associated with passive adsorption of polymers in nanopores is now available on arXiv. Here we combine detailed analysis of ionic current traces, Quartz Crystal Microbalance measurements and simulations to explore how characteristic noise in the ionic current trace reflects passive adsorption of polymers to the pore surface.

In a very exciting week three new papers have  now appeared online!  

In Science Advances, ‘Direct detection of molecular intermediates from first-passage times’ discusses a method to reveal details of energy landscapes from analysis of dynamic properties. Some exciting experimental collaborations with the Bayley group (University of Oxford) and Ritort group (University of Barcelona) and with theorist Anatoly Kolomeisky (Rice University) allowed us to demonstrate how our method can be used to count intermediate states across a diverse range of systems – colloids, biological nanopores and DNA hairpins- which differ in their timescales, length scales and interactions.  

‘Generalized network theory of physical two-dimensional systems’ (online here) also considers how a single analysis links many different systems (here from molecular materials, to colloids to geopolitical regions (!)), this time with respect to the structure of networks describing them. Exciting to have contributed our data to this paper from the Wilson group (University of Oxford). 

Finally, bringing the focus back to colloids, ‘Long-time self-diffusion in quasi-two-dimensional colloidal fluids of paramagnetic particles’ explores the effect (or non-effect…) of hydrodynamic interactions in colloidal monolayers of particles with long-range interactions.  More fascinating work with collaborators Nima Siboni and Jürgen Horbach. 

 

Our new paper looking at the noise in rectifying and non-rectifying nanopores has just appeared online.

Here,  we studied the behaviour of conical glass nanopores as components in ionic circuits, showing that while net conduction is bulk dominated, the low frequency noise is surface dominated. 

Alice presented work on analysing first passage time distributions to uncover energy landscapes in talks at the 5th International Soft Matter Conference in Edinburgh (June 2019) and the ‘Transport Phenomena in Complex Environments’ conference in Erice, Sicily (September 2019). 

Following on from her RSC SMTG young scientist award, the Oxford Scientist Magazine has featured some of Alice’s work on the 2D melting transition. 

Read the full article here

 

Alice has won the 2019 RSC Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics Group (SMTG) Young Scientist Award for her experimental work on the two-dimensional melting of colloidal hard spheres (PRL 118, 158001 (2017)). The prize is awarded for ‘exceptional contributions in the field of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics’ and was awarded in recognition of her experimental resolution of a decades-old debate. She will give her Award Lecture during the Annual Meeting of the SMTG group in Manchester, 9-11 January 2019.