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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/L98251/01
Title: PHASE TRANSITIONS IN CONFINED GEOMETRIES
Principal Investigator: Miles, Professor MJ
Other Investigators:
Hanna, Dr S Allen, Professor MP
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Physics
Organisation: University of Bristol
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 November 1998 Ends: 31 March 2002 Value (£): 190,097
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Complex fluids & soft solids
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
The effect of confined geometries on phase transitions (1st and 2nd order) will be studied for liquid crystals in both experimental investigations and computer simulations.Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM) provides a novel method of following these transitions. Thestructure and transition temperatures of an adsorbed monolayer on graphite (HOPG) in contact withbulk liquid crystal have been shown by STM to be closely related to the bulk liquid-crystal phase. The effect of layer thickness on the transition temperature will be followed by STM. Lateral confinement will also be introduced using shallow etched pits in the graphite surface, and the resulting and the transition temperatures will be determined.For confinement involving less than 500 molecules, full atomistic molecular simulations will be performed in order to complement the experiments by studying the evolution of structural correlations between molecules on shorter time scales and examining the nature of the phase transitions in more detail.Simpler models whose parameters can be adjusted to represent the molecule faithfully, will allow many thousands of molecules to be studied over tens of nanoseconds. This will allow us to study the nucleation, layering and phase transition phenomena in great detail.
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Organisation Website: http://www.bris.ac.uk