Main Focus
My current research interests relate to three interconnected themes:
- Self-assembly and dis-assembly: how nanoscale building blocks can be induced to spontaneously form materials with emergent properties and behaviour.
- Chirality transfer: how the breaking of mirror symmetry at one scale (e.g. stereoisomerism of molecules) determines the properties of larger-scale structures.
- Optics: using light, especially visible light, to characterise and control soft matter systems.
A fascinating experimental system that combines these themes is the chiral self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals to form photonic films [1]. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are rod-like nanoparticles that spontaneously form a left-handed cholesteric liquid crystal phase in aqueous suspension and can be used to create structurally coloured films (see https://www.mpikg.mpg.de/6828900/researchtopic-cellulose-nanocrystal-self-assembly for more info). I previously investigated the relationship between the morphology of individual CNC particles and their mesophase assembly, which elucidated the mechanism of chirality transfer across length-scales [2]. I have also explored the use of angle-resolved optical spectroscopy on CNC films as a way to infer the onset of colloidal gel or glass formation in the drying suspension [3].
Figure 1: Evolution of a CNC suspension upon increasing concentration, from an isotropic state (a) to the emergence of the cholesteric phase as tactoids (not to scale) (b), then a fully cholesteric polydomain structure (c) that undergoes kinetic arrest and dries to form a solid helicoidal photonic film (a-c Copyright © 2023 The Authors 10.1021/accountsmr.3c00019 licensed under CC BY 4.0) (d). Inset represents cholesteric ordering. Reproduced with permission from 10.1002/adom.201600451 under CC-BY. Copyright 2016 The Authors. (e) Typical CNC morphology as observed in TEM. Data from 10.1038/s41467-022-30226-6. (f−h) Optical characterization across length-scales: (f) photograph of a photonic film in a 35 mm diameter Petri dish (g) polarized optical micrograph of the same film with (h) corresponding polarized microspectroscopy. Reproduced with permission from 10.1038/s41563-021-01135-8. Copyright 2021 The Authors. (i) Tuning the color of photonic CNC films across the visible spectrum by varying the ratio of added electrolyte (NaCl) per CNC dry mass in units of μmol/g. © The Authors https://doi.org/10.1021/accountsmr.3c00019 under CC-BY 4.0
Related publications:
[1] https://doi.org/10.1021/accountsmr.3c00019
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30226-6
[3] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/sm/d4sm00155a
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Parton is a group leader in the Department of Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials, headed by Prof. Silvia Vignolini at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces.
Dr. Parton completed his undergraduate studies in Natural Sciences (Physics and Physical Chemistry) at University College London (UCL) and the California Institute of Technology, winning the MAPS Faculty Medal (2015). He obtained a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, funded through the NanoDTC MRes+PhD program. He was awarded the ACS CELL Division Graduate Student Award (2023) and an MRS Silver Medal (2022). Following this, he was awarded an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. He has been a Group Leader at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces since September 2023 as well as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow since May 2024.