Robert Wickham
Associate
Professor
Department of
Physics
University of Guelph
50 Stone Road East
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
N1G 2W1
Office: MacNaughton 448
Phone: (519) 824 - 4120 x 53704
Fax: (519) 836 - 9967
E-mail: rwickham@physics.uoguelph.ca
Group
My group currently consists of two M.Sc. students and one undergraduate project student.
Research
My interests
lie in theoretical soft materials physics. My current research focuses on two
fundamental aspects of polymeric materials: the formation of nanostructures in
polymeric materials via self-assembly, and the interplay between these
structures and the dynamical evolution of the polymeric material. The study of
the structure, dynamics and response of biological polymer assemblies is also
emerging as a research theme in my group. We use a combination of sophisticated
analytical theory and high-performance computation to model the behaviour of
these systems.
My work has
industrial relevance to the area of materials nanofabrication and processing,
and to the development of novel materials through quantitative molecular
modelling. I am interested in
industrial collaboration - please contact me if you see potential in this
direction.
Some current
areas of interest include:
- influence
of confinement on the self-assembly of nanostructures in block copolymer
- kinetics
of order-order transitions in block copolymers
- development
of accurate field theories for polymer dynamics
- modelling
the mechanical response of peptidoglycan networks in bacteria
Selected
Publications
[1] Run Jiang, Qinghua Jin, Baohui Li, Datong Ding, Robert A.
Wickham, and An-Chang Shi, Phase behaviour
of
gradient copolymers, Macromolecules 41, 5457 (2008).
[2] Bing Miao and Robert A. Wickham, Fluctuation effects and the stability of the
Fddd network phase in
diblock
copolymer melts, J. Chem. Phys. 128, 054902 (2008).
[3] Weihua Li and Robert A. Wickham, Self-assembled morphologies of a diblock
copolymer melt confined in
a
cylindrical nanopore, Macromolecules 39, 8492-8498 (2006).
[4] Weihua Li, Robert A. Wickham and Robert A. Garbary, Phase diagram
for a diblock copolymer melt under
cylindrical
confinement, Macromolecules 39, 806-811 (2006).