ABSTRACT
Finite size effects are a promising candidate to probe a dynamical length scale in glass forming materials. A subset of these experiments involves the use of thin polymer film samples. This talk explores the past three decades of studies on thin films of polymer glasses. We will explore the evolution of these experiments from simple measurements of glass transition temperature, to direct measures of surface dynamics and finally to recent experiments aimed at measuring the full depth dependent dynamics.
BIOGRAPHY
James Forrest completed his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Forrest then did graduate studies at the University of Guelph, Canada doing spectroscopic studies of proton irradiated solid hydrogens. After his PhD in 1994, Forrest changed fields to polymer physics with a postdoc also at Guelph. After this postdoc, he spent two years at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Forrest then took on a faculty position in Sheffield, U.K, where he stayed for two years before moving to the university of Waterloo, Canada in 2000. Forrest was promoted to professor in 2008, and was made a fellow of the American Physical Society in the same year. He was a co-recipient of the Canadian association of physicists Brockhouse medal in Materials Physics. Forrest has authored or coauthored over 100 paper, and those papers have been cited over 12000 times.
Professor, University of Waterloo
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