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Dr Toby Hudson


Contact Details

Lecturer
Room 456
School of Chemistry, Building F11
The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
E: toby.hudson@sydney.edu.au
T: +61-2-9036 7648
F: +61-2-9351-3329
W: http://sydney.edu.au/science/chemistry/~hudson_t

Career Profile

  • B. Sc. (Adv) (Hons I & Medal), Chemistry, Sydney, 1999
  • D. Phil., Materials Science, Oxford, 2004
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Oxford, 2004-2005
  • Sydney University Postdoctoral Fellow, Sydney, 2005-2008
  • Lecturer in Theoretical Materials Chemistry, Sydney, 2008-

Areas of Interest

  • Materials structure
  • Defect motion and structural evolution
  • Network materials
  • Liquids and glasses
  • Crystal growth
  • Monte Carlo simulation
  • Structural search algorithms

Research

(see webpage for current student projects)

My research is currently focussed on the following areas:

  • Determining how local rearrangement mechanisms in network liquids and glasses achieve stress relaxation, and hence flow. This will also give a detailed picture of how collective processes such as crystallization begin. (with Prof P. Harrowell, Usyd)
  • Optimal dense packing of binary compounds. Combining data-mining and Monte Carlo methods, we have discovered some structures that are able to pack two-component hard sphere systems more densely than if the components were separated and close packed. We are currently optimising these structures, and will determine their contribution to the binary hard sphere phase diagram. This project has application to pressure transitions and densely packed colloidal systems such as opals.
  • Improving structural search algorithms. Numerous artificial intelligence methods have been developed by computer scientists, but applying them to chemical structures is nontrivial. By importing chemically reasonable mechanisms and structures into these methods we are able to sample the structural configuration space fast enough to rapidly equilibrate, or identify ground state structures.

Publications (2008 to 2011)

(see webpage for a full list)

  1. O'Toole, PI and Hudson, TS. New high-density packings of similarly sized binary spheres. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 115 (39), 19037-19040, 2011. DOI: 10.1021/jp206115p

  2. Hudson, TS and Harrowell, P. Structural searches using isopointal sets as generators: Densest packings for binary hard sphere mixtures. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 23 (19), 194103 (6pp), 2011. DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/23/19/194103

  3. Pedersen, UR; Hudson, TS and Harrowell, P. Crystallization of the Lewis-Wahnström ortho-terphenyl model. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 134 (11), 114501 (6pp), 2011. DOI: 10.1063/1.3559153

  4. Marshall, GW and Hudson, TS. Dense binary sphere packings. Beiträge zur Algebra und Geometrie: Contributions to Algebra and Geometry, 51 (2), 337-344, 2010. http://www.emis.de/journals/BAG/vol.51/no.2/3.html

  5. Hudson, TS. Dense sphere packing in the NaZn13 structure type. J. Phys. Chem. C., 114 (33), 14013-14017, 2010. DOI: 10.1021/jp1045639

  6. Kummerfeld, JK; Hudson, TS and Harrowell, P. The densest packing of AB binary hard-sphere homogeneous compounds across all size ratios. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 112 (35), 10773-10776, 2008. DOI: 10.1021/jp804953r

  7. Hudson, TS and Harrowell, P. Dense packings of hard spheres of different sizes based on filling interstices in uniform three-dimensional tilings. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 112 (27), 8139-8143, 2008. DOI: 10.1021/jp802912a and Erratum DOI: 10.1021/jp103375p