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Georgia Pilkington

Georgia studied chemistry at Bristol, obtaining 1st BSc and MRes before failing to resist the allure of a PhD. In her own words: "In my spare time I enjoy playing badminton both with colleagues from the university and at All Saints badminton club, kickboxing, travelling, drinking cider and socialising." Her love of Somerset ciders is indeed evident from the photo.

PhD Research: Dendritic nanofluids mediating surface forces

I am a final year PhD student in the Briscoe group after working with Wuge during my final year BSc project and Master by Research (Friction between nano-structured surfaces: Amontons’ laws on the nanoscale). During my PhD, my research has focused on addressing some of the outstanding questions and challenges regarding how fluids containing nanometer-sized structures would mediate surface forces.

 

With several tuneable parameters such as size, shape and surface chemistry dendritic polymers (or dendrimers) offer a unique model nanofluid for investigating the effect of nanostructures on classic colloidal phenomena. In order to perform direct measurements of the surface forces mediated by such nanofluids I have helped to establish an SFA laboratory in Bristol. In addition, I have used other complementary techniques such as small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and neutron scattering (SANS), as well as X-ray reflectivity (XRR) measurements to characterise nanofluid systems both in the bulk and at the mica-water interface. Such measurements have been taken at the (ESRF; BM28; XRR), (ISIS; SANS2D and LoQ), Diamond Light Source (Didcot; I22; SAXS), and include a recent SAXS measurements at the University of Aarhus, Denmark as part of a COST fellowship with Professor Jan Skov Pedersen. In the next 6 months I intend to obtain SFA measurements across nanofluids containing PAMAM dendrimers and present my work at the IV International Surface Forces Conference near Moscow in May 2014.

SoftMatter@interfaces

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