Owen Hickey
Postdoc
| Office: | 210 |
|---|---|
| Phone: | +49 711 685-63594 |
| Fax: | +49 711 685-63658 |
| Email: | ohickey _at_ icp.uni-stuttgart.de |
| Address: | Owen Hickey Institute for Computational Physics Universität Stuttgart Allmandring 3 70569 Stuttgart Germany |
Research
I am interested in the simulation of electrokinetic phenomena, namely electrophoresis and electroosmotic flow, involving polymers. Particularly I am interested in simulating systems which have yet to be explored using molecular dynamics and the sometimes surprising results of the interplay between electrostatic and hydrodynamic interactions.
Implicit Electrohydrodynamics Using Lattice-Boltzmann and ESPResSo
During my time in Stuttgart in 2009 I developed an implicit scheme for simulating the electrohydrodynamics of polyelectrolytes which was later published in 2010. I have made a number of videos (with much help from Georg Rempfer) which illustrate some of the intricacies of electrokinetics.
Free Solution Electrophoresis of Polyelectrolytes
This video shows the electrophoresis of charged polymers in free solution (bulk fluid without obstacles or a sieving matrix). The video illustrates two interesting points, namely polymers of different length all move with the same speed and the motion of the polymers do not perturb the surrounding fluid.
Comparing Electrophoresis to Sedimentation
Publications
Hickey O.A., Modulating Electro-osmotic Flow with Polymer Coatings, Ph.D. thesis, University of Ottawa 2012 [1]
Shendruk T.N., Hickey O.A., Slater G.W., Harden J.L.. Electrophoresis: When hydrodynamics matter, 2012 17 (2), Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science [2]
Hickey O.A., Holm C., Harden J.L. and Slater G.W., Influence of Charged Polymer Coatings on Electro-Osmotic Flow: Molecular Dynamics Simulations, 2011 44 (23), Macromolecules, pp 9455–9463 [3]
Hickey O.A., Harden J.L., Holm C. and Slater G.W., Implicit method for simulating electrohydrodynamics of polyelectrolytes, 2010 105 (14), 148301, Physical Review Letters [4]
Slater G.W., Holm C., Chubynsky M.V., de Haan H.W., Dube A., Grass K., Hickey O.A., Kingsburry C., Sean D., Shendruk T.N. and Zhan L., Modeling the separation of macromolecules: a review of current computer simulation methods, 2009, Electrophoresis 20 (5), pp.792-818 [5]
Hickey O.A., Harden J.L. and Slater G.W., Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Optimal Dynamic Uncharged Polymer Coatings for Quenching Electro-osmotic Flow, 2009, Physical Review Letters 102 (10), 108304 [6]
Hickey O.A. and Slater G.W., The diffusion coefficient of a polymer in an array of obstacles is a non-monotonic function of the degree of disorder in the medium, 2007, Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics 364 (6), pp. 448-452 [7]
Hickey O.A., Mercier, J-F, Gauthier, M.G., Tessier, F., Bekhechi S. and Slater G.W., Effective molecular diffusion coefficient in a two-phase gel medium, 2006, Journal of Chemical Physics 124 (20), 204903 [8]