From clean energy to green chemistry, many technologies hinge on molecular self-organisation at interfaces. We bring atomistic insight — and often direct collaboration with experimentalists — to these soft-matter problems.
We elucidated how additives control methane-hydrate nucleation and growth — sodium dodecyl sulfate (J. Phys. Chem. B, 2018), the amino acid L-histidine (J. Nat. Gas Sci. Eng., 2016), Hofmeister salts (Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2020) and mixed SDS+CAPB surfactant morphologies (J. Mol. Liq., 2020) — guiding the design of kinetic promoters and inhibitors.
We revealed multimodal binding and stabilisation of DNA by choline amino-acid ionic liquids (ACS Central Science, 2018) and the stabilisation of cytochrome c by amino-acid-based ionic liquids (J. Phys. Chem. B, 2019), informing greener biopreservation.
Our work spans efficient light harvesting in self-assembled organic luminescent nanotubes (Chem. Sci., 2023), heterogeneous nucleation in the citrate synthesis of silver nanoparticles (Chem. Eng. J., 2021), molecular insight into CO₂ capture by polyethylenimine (Langmuir, 2018), bio-based polymer design (J. Polym. Sci. A, 2017), dye–surfactant interactions (Langmuir, 2022) and odd–even effects in photoswitchable liquid-crystal mesophases (Phys. Rev. E, 2022).