Applications Support & Maintenance Services
Thermal Analysis, Rheology and more
Contributions To Publications
Whilst working for TA Instruments, Oxford University (Oxford Silk Group, Department of Zoology) and independently, Nick Hawkins has made contributions to publications in a range of different research areas. These contributions have mostly been in the areas of Thermal Analysis and Rheology and were primarily for sample preparation and measurement, method development, data analysis and interpretation. The papers for which contributions have been made to date are given in the listing below.
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2018 - Holland, C., Hawkins, N., Frydrych, M., Laity, P., Porter, D. & Vollrath, F. - Differential Scanning Calorimetry of Native Silk Feedstock - Macromoecular Bioscience.
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2018 - Wang, J., Guan, J., Hawkins, N. & Vollrath, F. - Analysing the structure and glass transition behaviour of silks for archaeology and conservation - Journal of the Royal Society, Interface 15: (139)
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2016 - Monks, JN., Yan, B., Hawkins, N., Vollrath, F. & Wang, Z. - Spider Silk: Mother Nature’s Bio-Superlens - Nano Lett, 16: 5842–5845
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2016 - Dicko, C., Kasoju, N., Hawkins, N., & Vollrath, F. - Differential scanning fluorimetry illuminates silk feedstock stability and processability - Soft Matter, 12: 255-262
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2016 - Kasoju, N., Hawkins, N., Pop-Georgievski, O., Kubies, D. & Vollrath, F. - Silk fibroin gelation via non-solvent induced phase separation - Biomater. Sci., 4: 460-473
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2016 - L Jean, CF Lee, P Hodder, N Hawkins, DJ Vaux - Dynamics of the formation of a hydrogel by a pathogenic amyloid peptide: islet amyloid polypeptide. - Scientific reports, 2016 - nature.com
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2015 - Dicko, C., Kasoju, N., Hawkins, N. & Vollrath, F. - Differential scanning fluorimetry illuminates silk feedstock stability and processability - Soft Matter.
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2015 - S Pathak, A Sepe, A Sadhanala, F Deschler, A Haghighirad, N Sakai, KC Goedel, SD Stranks, N Noel, M Price, S Hüttner, NA Hawkins, RH Friend, U Steiner, HJ Snaith - Atmospheric influence upon crystallization and electronic disorder and its impact on the photophysical properties of organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells. - ACS nano 9 (2015) 2311-2320
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2014 - F Vollrath, N Hawkins, D Porter, C Holland - Differential Scanning Fluorimetry provides high throughput data on silk protein transitions. - Scientific reports, 2014 - nature.com
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2014 - Y Wang, J Guan, N Hawkins, D Porter, Z Shao - Understanding the variability of properties in Antheraea pernyi silk fibres - Soft matter.
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2009 - Denny Mahlina,∗, John Wooda, Nicholas Hawkins, Jas Mahey, Paul G. Royalla - A novel powder sample holder for the determination of glass transition temperatures by DMA - International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Elsevier, 2009
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1996 - C Tomasi, P Mustarelli, NA Hawkins, V Hill - Characterisation of amorphous materials by Modulated Differential Scanning Calorimetry - Thermochimica acta, 1996 - Elsevier
Other Scientific Contributions - DMA Powder Holder
Whilst working independently, Nick Hawkins invented the powder holder accessory for use with Dynamic Mechanical Analysis to measure changes in the mechanical properties/stiffness of powders. This accessory is now widely used in the pharmaceutical, foodstuffs, and coatings industry worldwide and has proved to be an important advancement of the capabilities of this technique. It has also found widespread use in the characterisation of materials that cannot be clamped or supported using traditional clamp configurations (Spider silk, brittle films and coatings for example). The powder holder accessory and the dual cantilever clamp in which it is used are shown in the pictures below.
Powder Holder
Powder is spread into the holder and the lid then placed onto the top surface (See picture on left). Once prepared it is then loaded into the Dual Cantilever clamp configuration where the holder is secured with three clamps (two on the outer edge and one at the centre). The holder is then deformed above and below its zero stress point to measure changes in viscoelastic properties with temperature. It is widely used to study powdered substances and materials that cannot be clamped using conventional configurations. Sample masses as low as a few mg's can be tested with the accessory.
