British chemist
Susan Perkin is a British chemist who is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the physics of liquids and soft matter. She was awarded the 2016 Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize and named the Soft Matter Lecturer of 2018. In 2015 Perkin was awarded a European Research Council starting grant and in 2020 she was awarded a European Research Council consolidator grant.
Early life and education
Perkin was an undergraduate student at the University of Oxford, where she completed a master's degree in chemistry at St John's College.[1] She remained at Oxford for her doctoral research, where she worked alongside Jacob Klein.[2] Her research involved placements at Oxford and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Before completing her doctorate, Perkin was made a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford.[1]
Research and career
In 2007 Perkin was named a Research Councils UK Fellow at University College London.[3] She returned to Oxford in 2012 to join the faculty in the Department of Chemistry, where she serves as a Fellow of Trinity College.[4]
Perkin is interested in liquid interfaces, and explores them using a surface forces balance. In such experiments, liquids are confined between insulators or electrodes, and measurements are made of their mechanical, optical, electrical and dynamic properties.[5] This set-up allows for characterisation of materials properties in both natural (i.e. non-biased) and working (i.e. during device operation) environments. This type of characterisation is essential to the application of functional materials in energy storage and bio-materials.[6]
She leads a European Research Council funded programme that looks at electrolytic materials, in an effort to understand the fundamental physics that underpins their properties and interactions.[7] Electrolytic materials are used in the electrolytes for batteries and form the interiors of halophilic organisms.[7] One type of electrolyte is an ionic liquid, which is in a liquid state in ambient conditions because their asymmetric, bulky ionic structures will not crystallise. Despite this, the dynamics of ionic liquids cannot be explained using conventional physical theories.[8] By using surface force analysis to study ionic liquids, Perkin has shown it is possible to estimate the screening length, near-surface ordering, capacitance and charge regulation.[6]
Awards and honours
Selected publications
References
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