User Meeting

We are holding the UCD AFM Users’ Meeting on April 26 from 10-12 on Zoom. With new AFM systems having arrived or due to arrive across the university, the meeting serves to give a forum for the community of users to showcase and discuss their research. The schedule for the meeting is shown below; we look forward to seeing you there (email brian.rodriguez@ucd.ie for Zoom invitation).

10:00 Welcome

10:03 Lecturer/Assistant Professor Dr Sourav Bhattacharjee, “AFM on mucin strands and its therapeutic implications”

10:14 Visakh Pillai (Benedetto group), “Amyloid-ionic liquid: an AFM based approach”

10:25 Dr Jacek Wychowaniec (Brougham group), “Quantitative nanomechanical properties evaluation of a family of β-sheet peptide fibres using rapid bimodal AFM”

10:36 Pallavi Kumari (Benedetto group), “Room temperature Ionic liquids reduce the mechano-elasticity of lipid bilayer: AFM force spectroscopy studies”

10:47 Hossam Ibrahim (Rodriguez group), “Spherical probe preparation for nano mechanical characterisation”

10:53 Deirdre Clissmann (Brennan group), “AFM analysis of a chemically crosslinked 3D cell culture model of the optic nerve”

10:59 Michelle Fox (Thorpe group), “Biomechanical assessment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using AFM”

11:05 Agata Fularz (Rice group), “Nanoscale structuring of polymers”

11:16 Paven Thomas Mathew (Fang group), “Fundamental studies to achieve atomic scale material removal using atomic force microscopy”

11:27 Ciaran Barron (Zerulla group), “Sculpting plasmonic emitters using AFM lithography”

11:33 Louise Tackaberry (Rodriguez/Brougham), “Characterisation of PNIPAM microgels using AFM”

11:39 Tianyu Guan (Zhang group), “Modified AFM tip to determine the adhesion and friction between coating and polymer materials”

11:45 Dr Srikanth Kolagatla (Rodriguez group), “Localized contact potential measurements on battery anode materials”

11:51 Discussion

12:00 End

Magnetic Hydrogels: Spatiotemporally Resolved Heat Dissipation in 3D Patterned Magnetically Responsive Hydrogels

Great to see this work led by Prof. Dermot Brougham published in Small. Congrats to Trish and Jacek and all co-authors! From Small: “Dermot F. Brougham and co‐workers demonstrate 3D printable responsive magnetic hydrogels composed of magnetic iron oxide nanoflowers and Pluronic polymers that encode spatiotemporally controlled temperature increase and dye release on alternating magnetic field irradiation.“

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"Replica molds of cicada wings give flight to possibilities of antibacterial surfaces"

Pleased to be involved with Prof. Susan Kelleher’s work on cicada wings with Dr Shauna Flynn as first author. The work was recently published in Biointerphases' Special Topic Collection: Biomimetics of Biointerfaces.

“Replica molding of cicada wings: The role of water at point of synthesis on nanostructure feature size,” by Shauna P. Flynn, Stephen Daniels, Brian J. Rodriguez, and Susan M. Kelleher, Biointerphases (2020). The article can be accessed here.

The work was selected as a featured article and an AIP Scilight.

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Matrixassay

Towards the end of last year, the European Commission / CORDIS released a Results in Brief on our Matrixassay project. You can read about it here in 6 languages! Thanks to the European Commission for the Horizon 2020 MSCA funding, our Project Officer, and to all of the beneficiaries and partners for their thoughtful work during the project.

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