Herr Dr Philipp Schönhöfer: Enlightened, at last.
Congratulations to Philipp Schönhöfer, now Dr Schönhöfer, for completing an excellent computational PhD thesis on the self-assembly of pear-shaped colloid particles, now fully published!
Philipp’s work has addressed the largely entropic self-assembly of hard pear-shaped colloidal particles, which had previously been found to adopt, at the right density and particle shape parameters, the Ia(-3)d Gyroid phase.
In order to simulate such systems at reasonable size, it was necessary to represent these particles through a non-additive approximation (which, however, appeared to be a very good one). Through Philipp’s work, we have learned that the self-assembly of these particles is more strongly affected by this approximation than we (and others) thought. Philipp has found that truly hard pear-shaped particles do not form a Gyroid phase. But who is to say that real and approximately pear-shaped colloids would be perfectly hard….
Philipp’s thesis was published by FAU Press (both in print and online), and Philipp’s work has been published in a number of publications and a couple of preprints:
- P.A. Schönhöfer, M. Marechal, D. Cleaver, and G.E. Schröder-Turk, “Self-assembly and entropic effects in pear-shaped colloid systems: I. Shape sensitivity of bilayer phases in colloidal pear-shaped particle systems”, arxiv preprint, under review for publication in Journal of Chemical Physics (2020)
- P.A. Schönhöfer, M. Marechal, D. Cleaver, and G.E. Schröder-Turk, “Self-assembly and entropic effects in pear-shaped colloid systems: II. Depletion attraction of pear-shaped particles in a hard sphere solvent”, arxiv preprint, under review for publication in Journal of Chemical Physics (2020)
- M.A. Klatt, J. Lovric, D. Chen, S.C. Kapfer, F.M. Schaller, P.W.A. Schönhöfer, B.S. Gardiner, A.-S. Smith, G.E. Schröder-Turk, S. Torquato, “Universal hidden order in amorphous cellular geometries“, Nature Communications 10, 811 (2019)
- P.A. Schönhöfer, D. Cleaver and G.E. Schröder-Turk, “Double diamond phase in pear-shaped nanoparticle systems with hard sphere solvent“, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 51(46), 464003 (2018)
- P.A. Schönhöfer, G.E. Schröder-Turk, M. Marechal, “Density functional theory for hard uniaxial particles: Complex ordering of pear-shaped and spheroidal particles near a substrate“, The Journal of Chemical Physics 148, 124104 (2018)
- S. Weis, P.W.A. Schönhöfer, F.M. Schaller, M. Schröter, G.E. Schröder-Turk, “Pomelo, a tool for computing Generic Set Voronoi Diagrams of Aspherical Particles of Arbitrary Shape“, Powders and Grains, EPJ Web of Conferences 140, 06007 (2017)
- Philipp W. A. Schönhöfer, Laurence J. Ellison, Matthieu Marechal, Douglas J. Cleaver, and Gerd E. Schröder-Turk, “Purely Entropic Self-Assembly of the Bicontinuous Ia3d Gyroid-Phase“, Interface Focus 7(3), 20160161 (2017)
Philipp pursued his thesis work in a co-tutelle arrangement between Murdoch University in Perth and the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen. Submitted in 2019, his thesis received the distinction grade ‘summa cum laude’. Philipp’s work was supervised in cooperation with Matthieu Marechal (Erlangen), Klaus Mecke (Erlangen), Doug Cleaver (Sheffield) and Mark Lukas (Murdoch University). Philipp has now moved to Sharon Glotzer’s group in Michigan, as a next step in his academic career. Thank you, Philipp, for your excellent work and for your friendly and helpful collegiality!
Beyond his research, Philipp was a staunch supporter of the German football team Bayern München and remained so throughout his thesis work. However, when presented with a Borussia Dortmund T-Shirt upon completion of his PhD viva voce, he put it on with such joy and enthusiasm that it is believed that he has now changed his allegiances….