Johann de Silva is an eclectic mix of Britain and Sri Lanka, with a Portuguese name for good measure. Jonhann started working on the stability of polymer multilayer films in October 2002. The project, a continuation of my postdoctoral work in Bayreuth, is a collaboration with the Krausch group in Bayreuth, Günter Reiter in Mulhouse (where he spent a month), and Marie-Odile David, formerly of Mulhouse, now at the Université d'Évry near Paris. Dr Anthony Higgins (now in Swansea) is also involved. Johann is shown here with one of our DI Multimode scanning force microscopes. On December 21, 2006 Johann successfully defended his thesis before his examiners, Professors Michele Sferrazza (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Richard Jones (University of Sheffield). He will tell you that his thesis defense was awful, but Michele employed him as a postdoctoral researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, so it can't have been that bad. He is now at Trinity College Dublin, working with Graham Cross
Publications
J. P. de Silva, S. J. Martin, R. Cubitt, and M. Geoghegan "Observation of the complete rupture of a buried polymer layer by off-specular neutron reflectometry" EPL 86 36005 (2009).
J. P. de Silva, M. Geoghegan, A. M. Higgins, G. Krausch, M.-O. David, and G. Reiter "Switching layer stability in a polymer bilayer by thickness variation" Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 267802 (2007).
Oral presentations and awards
Polymer Physics Group Biennial Meeting, Leeds, September 2005.
Properties of Polymers in Thin Films workshop, Mulhouse, France, September 2006
European Commission (COST) scholarship to spend March 2005 in Mulhouse