We would like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! The Editorial office will be closed from 24th December 2010 and will re-open on January 4th 2011.
We’re looking forward to 2011, which will see some great themed issues, the 2011 Soft Matter Lectureship and much more! Don’t miss out – sign up to our blog’s RSS feed!
from the Soft Matter Editorial team
Call for nominations
Soft Matter is pleased to announce that nominations are now being accepted for the Soft Matter Lectureship 2011. This annual lectureship was established by the journal in 2009 to honour a younger scientist who has made a significant contribution to the soft matter field.
Qualification
To be eligible for the Soft Matter Lectureship, the candidate should be in the earlier stages of their scientific career, typically within 15 years of attaining their doctorate or equivalent degree, and will have made a significant contribution to the field.
Description
The recipient of the lectureship will be asked to present a lecture three times, one of which will be located in the home country of the recipient. The Soft Matter Editorial Office will provide the sum of £1000 to the recipient for travel and accommodation costs.
The recipient will be presented with a certificate at one of the three lectures. They will also be asked to contribute a lead article to the journal and will have their work showcased on the back cover of the issue in which their article is published.
Selection
The recipient of the lectureship will be selected and endorsed by the Soft Matter Editorial Board.
Nominations
Those wishing to make a nomination should send details of the nominee, including a brief C.V. (no longer than 2 pages A4) together with a letter (no longer than 2 pages A4) supporting the nomination, to Liz Davies, Editor by 18 February 2011. Self nomination is not permitted.
The paper featured on the front cover is “A functionally graded shape memory polymer” by Patrick Mather (Syracuse University, USA) and co-workers. Their paper (also reported in Highlights in Chemical Technology and selected as a Hot Article) describes the preparation and characterization of the first shape memory polymer with a graded range of transition temperatures.
The inside front cover features “Driving bioenergetic processes with electrodes” which reports the work of a team led by Lars Jeuken (University of Leeds, UK). This paper, also selected as a Hot Article, reports on surface-applied electrochemical potentials that are used to drive the formation of a proton gradient in adsorbed lipid vesicles.
In total the issue has a mammoth 7 Hot Articles. Here’s the full list. Click on the titles to read them.
You can read the whole issue here.
A team of scientists led by Susanne Franziska Fenz have used the adhesion of giant unilamellar vesicles to supported bilayers to mimic ligand–receptor mediated cell-cell adhesion. The team investigated the effect of varying the concentration of receptors (neutravidin on the bilayer) and ligands (biotin on the vesicle) on the adhesion and the organization of receptors in the adhesion zone. Interested to know more? Download and read the article for free for a limited time.
Susanne Franziska Fenz, Ana-Sunčana Smith, Rudolf Merkel and Kheya Sengupta, Soft Matter, 2011, DOI:10.1039/C0SM00550A.
The annual condensed matter and materials physics conference CMMP10 was held last week at the University of Warwick. This year the conference included a number of symposia relevant to the soft matter community including biological physics, polymer physics and soft matter in action. Soft matter plenary lectures were given by Prof. Marshall Stoneham “Where quantum physics meets biology”, Prof. Dame Athene Donald “Self-assembly of proteins”, Prof. Christopher Ober “Will polymers be used to make the next generation nanoworld” and Prof. Mike Cates “Understanding liquid crystals using mesoscopic computer simulation”.
Below I have highlighted a couple of interesting talks. The conference proceedings will be published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS).
Magnetic alignment of anisotropic structures in solution.
Alex Holmes (University of Bristol) introduced the new Birmingham 17T cryomagnet designed for use in small angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements. The magnet operates in the temperature range of 1.6K to 300K and magnetic field up to 17T with 0.1% uniformity over 10 nm.
Here Alex discussed initial experiments carried out at the Institut of Laue-Langevin, showing the viability of this technique for studying soft matter. The results show that the magnetic field can be used to align rod-like viruses, which behave as cholesteric liquid crystals at high concentrations. A transition from a multi-domain cholesteric structure at zero field, to a nematic phase at high field was observed.
The cryomagent offers an interesting technique to the soft matter community to study the behaviour of soft materials in the presence of high magnetic field and the group are open to collaborations. More information is available on their website.
AFM nanotools to investigate skin cells
In his talk, James Beard (University of Bath) discussed a novel approach to modifying AFM tips using electron beam induced deposition using a scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The secondary electrons interact with contaminants in the SEM leaving behind a deposit of amorphous carbon on surfaces exposed to the electron beam. A variety of highly durable ‘nanotools’ can be formed in this manner such as ‘nanoscapels’, ‘nanoneedles’ with lengths of 500nm and thicknesses of 10-50 nm and ‘nanotomes’.
James demonstrated the use of the nanoscapel probes for cutting biological samples with high precision and nanoneedles to investigate the mechanical properties of corneocyte cells using a nanoindentation technique. The results of the experiments were published in Nanotechnology doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/20/44/445302.
Micro-wrinkled bilayer structures with gradient wetting properties
Kevin Langley (University of Nottingham) demonstrated, in his talk, the use of Aluminium-elastomer bilayers to form micro-wrinkled structures. The Aluminium capping layer was thermally evaporated onto a thick pre-strained elastomer substrate. The strain was then released causing the bilayer to wrinkle with a well defined wavelength and amplitude, dependent on the capping layer thickness and the applied pre-strain.
Kevin was able to create gradient wavelength wrinkled surfaces. Such a surface provides anisotropic wetting properties and could be used as a gradient energy surface to, amongst other things, move water droplets. Similar surfaces have been fabricated through UV-ozone etching of elastomers (Soft Matter doi:10.1039/B705112C) .
A short movie was played, demonstrating that the droplets did indeed move when placed onto these surfaces and vibrated close to their resonant frequency. These surfaces are an interesting candidate for low cost gradient energy surfaces. The results have been published in Langmuir doi: 10.1021/la1036212.
Read this Hot Review explaining how the plasma state of soft matter can be used to investigate various phenomena such as phase transitions, phase separation, self-organizations, rheology, linear and nonlinear waves, transport, etc… at the most fundamental kinetic level.
Novel polymer nanowires with triple hydrogen-bonding sites have been prepared by scientists at Tsinghua University, China. The nanowires were prepared from a metallogel template and were tested as adsorbing agents for the ‘uptake’ of thymidine from dilute THF solution. The team claims that the efficient adsorbing performance and reusable properties will render them ideal candidates for applications relating to biological adsorption.
Botian Li, Liming Tang, Lu Qiang and Kai Chen, Soft Matter, 2011, DOI:10.1039/C0SM00857E
A simple approach to selectively immobilize proteins on patterned silicon wafers has been developed by a team of scientists led by Lifeng Chi and Armido Studer.
The team from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany, created nanostripe patterns of proteins over large areas on Si-wafers uing Langmuir–Blodgett patterning and subsequent orthogonal surface chemistry.
Interested to know more? Read the full article here: Yong Li, Julia C. Niehaus, Yueyue Chen, Harald Fuchs, Armido Studer, Hans-Joachim Galla and Lifeng Chi, Soft Matter, 2011, DOI:10.1039/C0SM00994F
We are delighted to announce a high-profile themed issue on Biomimetic Soft Matter to be published in 2011. Professor Ian Hamley (University of Reading and Diamond Light Source, UK) is the Guest Editor and it is our pleasure to invite you to submit to this themed issue.
It now seems particularly timely to publish a focused set of articles covering new interdisciplinary research on biomimetic soft matter. This area is the subject of considerable international research activity, stimulated by recent developments in synthesis, characterization and modelling methodologies. The issue will feature contributions on the self-assembly of bioinspired peptide and protein constructs, DNA hybrids, biomimetic polymers, bio-inspired templating of inorganic materials, biomimetic cell growth media and tissue scaffolds and many other aspects of this fascinating subject.
The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts for this themed issue is 4th April 2011.
Submissions, either communications or full papers, should be high-quality manuscripts of original, unpublished research, containing important new insight. All submissions will be subject to rigorous peer review to meet the usual high standards of Soft Matter. Accepted manuscripts will be shown to the Guest Editor to ensure they are suitable for the scope of the themed issue.
Manuscripts can be submitted using our online submission service. Please state in your covering letter that your article was submitted in response to the Call for Papers for the themed issue on Biomimetic Soft Matter.
I would like to introduce our new web writer, Katherine Thomas (University of Cambridge, UK). Katherine will be contributing articles to the Soft Matter blog on the latest news of interest to the soft matter community.
Katherine Thomas
Katherine completed an undergraduate masters degree in Physics at the University of Nottingham. For her final research project she looked at the spontaneous wrinkling of polymer/polymer bilayers under the supervision of Dr. James Sharp. She moved to the University of Cambridge to carry out a PhD in polymer physics under the supervision of Professor Ullrich Steiner. Her thesis is entitled ‘Physical phenomena of thin surface layers’ and looks at the wetting behaviour of thin film polymer blends, non-equilibrium behaviour of thin polymer films and iridescence in tropical understorey plants. On completion of her PhD Katherine was awarded a PhD plus EPSRC fellowship to continue looking at the non-equilibrium behaviour of thin polymer films. In February 2011 she will take up a post-doctoral research position at the Max-Plank Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation in Göttingen under the supervision of Stephan Herminghaus.
Read Katherine’s latest paper, published in Soft Matter: Wetting induced instabilities in miscible polymer blends
Katherine R. Thomas, Nigel Clarke, Rosa Poetes, Mihai Morariu and Ullrich Steiner
Soft Matter, 2010, 6, 3517-3523
Look out for Katherine’s posts on the Soft Matter blog! To make sure you don’t miss any Soft Matter news sign up to the blog’s RSS feed
