The Christopher Wormald prize is awarded during the conference by the Members of the Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry to the most outstanding student contribution. Nominations to the prize are made by the student's supervisors. The prize consists of a plaque, a nominal cash prize and the possibility of presenting their work in a plenary session at the Thermodynamics meeting.
On this occasion, the Christopher Wormald prize has been awarded to Dr. Francisco Martínez-Verecoechea for his contribution on
" Stabilizing Ordered Bicontinuous Phases in Diblock Copolymer Systems "
Francisco’s Ph.D. Thesis has mostly entailed molecular simulation work (using both Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics), primarily to characterize the thermodynamics of nano-filled diblock copolymer melts. He has tackled a very challenging problem in this area: use particle-based simulations to understand the formation of bicontinuous phases. These 3D periodic phases are as beautiful as they are complicated and hard to find experimentally or computationally; they are also highly appealing for practical applications involving nano-porous materials, support membranes, conducting matrices, and to template high-surface, sturdy inorganic matrices for solar cells. A key underlying question he has been addressing is: how to rationally design an additive for a diblock copolymer melt to target a desired bicontinuous phase? He has made significant progress on this front having been essentially the first to report (via particle-based simulations) several types of bicontinuous phases in a systematic way (e.g., via the use of selective homopolymer and copolymer bidispersity). In his last year, Francisco learned and implemented self-consistent field theory to get more extensive results and complement his simulation data for these systems (perusing the open resources and help provided by Prof. David Morse at Minnesota). He has now generated several remarkable equilibrium phase diagrams showing that there are multiple ways to stabilize bicontinuous phases (including the “plumber’s nightmare” phase, the most elusive of them all).
Dr. Martínez-Veracoechea obtained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Cornell University in 2009, working under the supervision of Prof. Fernando A. Escobedo. Dr. Martinez has published 11 papers and has been cited 55 times in the last four years.