Ophelie Squillace

University of Birmingham · School of Chemical Engineering

Objective: The nature and magnitude of molecular interactions on hair surfaces underpin the design of formulated products, of which the application involves a competitive adsorption process between cationic surfactants, fatty alcohols, and surface actives such as silicone. The knowledge of molecular interaction with hair surface will not only prov...

To evaluate the role of common substrates in the transmission of respiratory viruses, in particular SARS-CoV-2, uniformly distributed microdroplets (approx. 10 µm diameter) of artificial saliva were generated using an advanced inkjet printing technology to replicate the aerosol droplets and subsequently deposited on five substrates, including glass...

The diffusion kinetics of a molecular probe—rhodamine B—in ternary aqueous solutions containing poly(vinyl alcohol), glycerol, and surfactants was investigated using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering. We show that the diffusion characteristics of rhodamine B in such complex systems is determined by a synergistic eff...

To evaluate the role of common substrates in the transmission of respiratory viruses, uniformly distributed microdroplets of artificial saliva were generated using an advanced inkjet printing technology to replicate the aerosol droplets, and subsequently deposited on five substrates, including glass, PTFE, stainless steel, ABS, and melamine. The dr...

We describe a bottom-up surface functionalization to design hybrid molecular coatings that tether biomembranes using wet chemistry. First, a monolayer was formed by immersion in a NH2-Ar-SO3H solution, allowing aryldiazonium salt radicals to spontaneously bind to it via strong C bonding. After formation of the air-stable and dense molecular monolay...

The vertical depth distributions of amine oxide surfactants, N,N-dimethyldodecyl amine N-oxide (DDAO) and N,N-dimethyltetradecyl amine N-oxide (DTAO) in poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) films was explored and identified using neutron reflectometry (NR). Both in binary and plasticised films, the two deuterated surfactants formed a single monolayer on the f...

This aims to establish design rules for the influence of complex polymer matrices on the surface properties of small molecules. Here, we consider the dependence of the surface behaviour of some model additives on polymer matrix hydrophobicity. With stoichiometric control over hydrolysis, we generate systematic changes in matrix chemistry from non-p...

Commercial surfactants, inexpensive and abundant, were covalently grafted to flat and transparent electrodes and it appears to be a simple functionalization route to design bio-membrane sensors at large scale production. Sparsely tethered bilayer lipid membranes (stBLM) were stabilized from such molecular coatings composed of diluted anchor-harpoon...

Les bicouches lipidiques constituent l’architecture socle des membranes biologiques et l’environnement bidimensionnel de leurs protéines. Ancrées sur une interface hydrophile hydratée, ces systèmes conservent leur fluidité et sont localisés durablement près d’un substrat. Dans ce domaine, nous avons développé une stratégie de fonctionnalisation rap...