Claire Pizzey
Industrial Liaison Scientist
Claire Pizzey is an Industrial Liaison Scientist taking responsibility for X-ray scattering experiments with or on behalf of industrial partners at Diamond. She works closely with the other members of Industrial Liaison team to provide a multi-disciplinary approach to solving real-world problems.
Prior to joining the Industrial Liaison Office, Claire was a senior beamline support scientist for the Non Crystalline Diffraction beamline and continues to acts as the “local contact” for industrial experiments on I22. A physical chemist by training, Claire was previously a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.
Email: Claire Pizzey
Tel: +44 (0) 1235 778765
Industrial Liaison Office
Key research areas:
Small angle X-ray scattering, grazing incidence X-ray diffraction, X-ray reflectivity, thin films, soft matter, colloids, liquid crystals, surfactants, nanoparticles, polymers, proteins, biomaterials.
Research Interests:
My work covers the techniques of small and wide angle X-ray scattering, grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering and grazing incidence diffraction. These techniques allow structural investigation of a wide range of industrially relevant systems, in bulk samples and thin films, in the atomic to micron size regime.
My research to date has involved the use of small angle scattering and related techniques to investigate the microstructures of systems ranging from polymer-based photovoltaic solar cell materials to non-aqueous colloidal suspensions and biologically relevant complexes of lipids with DNA.
I am interested in bionanomaterials; biomimetic or biologically inspired complex materials with a nanoscale structure. A good understanding of the nanoscale structure of a material can give insights into its macroscopic properties. This information can, in turn, be used to develop effective design rules. My research in this area included the self-assembly and liquid crystalline behaviour of designed beta-peptide oligomers and the formation of highly ordered complexes of a redox-active lipid and DNA.
Ordering and self-assembly are very important in the fields of colloid and polymer science and liquid crystal research. Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) and Grazing-Incidence SAXS give us access to information about these self-assembly processes and allows us to probe the nanoscale structure of the materials both in bulk samples and thin films. Previous work in this area focused on the preparation and characterisation of liquid crystal colloids and the swelling and exfoliation behaviour of organoclays over a wide range of conditions.
Selected Publications:
- T. Wang, A.D.F. Dunbar, P.A. Staniec, A.J. Pearson, P.E. Hopkinson, J.E. MacDonald, S. Lilliu, C. Pizzey, N.J. Terrill, A.M. Donald, A.J. Ryan, R.A.L. Jones, D.G. Lidzey, The Development of Nanoscale Morphology in Polymer:Fullerene Photovoltaic Blends during Solvent Casting, Soft Matt. (2010), 6 (17) 4128-4134.
- W.C. Pomerantz, V.M. Yuwono, C.L. Pizzey, J. D. Hartgerink, N. L. Abbott and S. H. Gellman, Nanofibers and Lyotropic Liquid Crystals from a New Class of Self- Assembling β-Peptides, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2008), 47 (7) 1241-1244.
- C.L. Pizzey, C.M. Jewell, M.E. Hays, D.M. Lynn, Y. Kondo, S. Golan, Y. Talmon and N.L. Abbott, Characterization of the Microstructures of Complexes formed by a Redox-Active Cationic Lipid and DNA, J. Phys. Chem. B (2008), 112 (18) 5849-5857.
- J. Connolly, J.S. van Duijneveldt, S. Klein, C. Pizzey and R.M. Richardson, Manipulation of Modified Clay Particles in a Nematic Solvent by a Magnetic Field, J. Phys.: Cond. Matt., (2007) 19, 156103.
- J. Connolly, J.S. van Duijneveldt, S. Klein, C. Pizzey and R.M. Richardson, Effect of Surfactant and Solvent Properties on the Stacking Behavior of Non-aqueous Suspensions of Organically Modified Clay, Langmuir, (2006) 22 (15) 6531-6538.