Thursday, 14 April 4:00pm – 5:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4 and Online Zoom Please email chemistry.researchsupport@sydney.edu.au for zoom link and password.

Speaker: Dr David Huang; School of Physical Sciences, The University of Adelaide

Host: A/Prof. Asaph Widmer-Cooper

Title: Excursions in soft condensed matter theory: from nanofluidics to organic photovoltaics

Abstract: Soft condensed matter — which includes a wide variety of dense phases such as liquids, liquid crystals, and polymers whose structure and dynamics are strongly influenced by thermal fluctuations — is ubiquitous in human society and the natural world, but its behaviour is often difficult to predict. In this talk I will discuss theories and computational methods that my research group has recently developed to enable a more systematic understanding of the properties of soft matter for applications in functional materials. I will focus on two specific problems: (1) predicting fluid flow driven by solute concentration gradients through membranes made from two-dimensional nanomaterials, which has implications for desalination, chemical separations, biosensing, and energy harvesting, and (2) predicting interface alignment of anisotropic organic semiconductors used in flexible electronic devices such as solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and transistors.

Biography: David Huang is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Adelaide. He received his BSc (Hons) degree in Physical Chemistry from the University of Sydney and his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. After a stint as a copy editor for Springer, he carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Lyon and then at the University of California, Davis, before beginning his independent research career at The University of Adelaide in 2010. His research focuses on using theory and computation to understand the properties of soft condensed matter for applications in renewable energy and functional materials.