Corals bleach under a number of stresses, one of these being thermal stresses exemplified by the 2010, 2016 and 2017 bleaching events in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Such events demand detailed physiological understanding in order to provide predictive knowledge of the effects of rising ocean temperatures on coral. One technique suitable for in situ examination of the effect of thermal...
Although the idea of a ‘cooperativity’ length scale ξ related to the glass transition is now wide-spread, there is much less consensus on whether this length scale can be related to thermodynamic fluctuations and, if yes, whether one has to consider temperature fluctuations δT. The crucial experiment to this end has to compare values of ξ from ‘thermodynamic’ formulae to independent values...
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are a valuable tool to investigate structure and dynamics of samples on the same time- and lengthscales as probed by neutron scattering experiments. Force fields for water and bigger molecules have been established, but can they reproduce neutron scattering experiments?
Different parameter fits for MD water models were made and compared to neutron...
The water dynamics is key to functionality and phase behavior of synthetic and biological polymers. Responsive polymers react strongly to external stimuli such as temperature and pressure triggering chain collapse and phase separation. We investigate the dynamic behavior of hydration water in a 25 wt% aqueous poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) solution in dependence on temperature (25 –...
We aim to apply “materials informatics” (MI) for the development of high-performance anion-exchange membranes (AEM), which may be applied to next generation energy devices, such as non-platinum fuel cell hybrid vehicles and all solid secondary batteries. Currently, there are two major obstacles to using MI for such systems: the unclear higher-order (hierarchical) structure/function...
Supramolecular polymers offer exciting prospects for materials with novel properties because of the reversibility of the non-covalent interactions, like H-bonding.[1,2] This work aims to unravel the correlation between H-bonding association and main chain polarity in supramolecular polymer melts. These are based on poly(ethylene)oxide (PEO) and poly(propylene)oxide (PPO) (in order of...
Using the amide I band, infrared (IR-) spectroscopy can give information on the fold of the protein and also allows to follow aggregation phenomena. Small angle neutron scattering also reports on the global structure of proteins in solution and can give information on the shape of growing aggregates or folded proteins in solution.
We would like to explore the capabilities of infrared...
We present operando small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments on silica and protein (BSA) fouling as well as scaling from a simulated secondary effluent (SSE) at the surface of a polyamide RO membrane at close to realistic conditions. In the first part we present a study of aqueous silica dispersions combining the parameters of colloidal radius, volume fraction, and ionic strength. The...
Fabricating functional material relies on non-equilibrium hydrodynamic flows. Spray deposition using atomization of complex liquids leads to a deposition of droplets on a substrate. The solvent evaporates and induces a complex flow in the dispersion. This leads to a nanostructuring of the nanoscale ingredients of the dispersion. Using cellulose nanofibrils and water as solvent, we have...
