A post-doctoral research assistant/associate will be appointed to work on a research project that will focus on colloidal systems undergoing vitrification and crystallization. Amorphous materials have novel properties which make them important in emerging technologies, and at a more fundamental level, understanding the glass transition and crystal nucleation are major challenges in condensed matter. Locally heterogeneous behaviour is important to both phenomena and ascertaining local structure is particularly suited to particle-resolved studies of colloidal model systems. Confocal microscopy accesses comprehensive time-resolved structural information at the level of the constituent particles.

However, current techniques have a limited range over which the slow dynamics that occur on approaching the glass transition can be probed. The project aims to approach the glass transition more closely than has been achieved previously with particle-resolved studies, and to probe nucleation regimes which have eluded real space techniques until now. To do so, new imaging techniques will be implemented, and new model systems will be developed.

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