Jonathan Coleman

Biography

Jonathan Coleman has been a lecturer in Physics at Trinity College Dublin since 2001. He graduated with First Class Honours and a gold medal in Physics in 1995 and completed a PhD in Physics in TCD in 1999 . Dr Coleman's main area of research is the study of Carbon nanotubes. These nanoscale cylinders, just a millionth of a millimeter wide but up to millimeters in length are more conductive than copper and many times stronger than steel. To harness these properties, Coleman's work focuses on mixing nanotubes with plastics to create new, functional composite materials. This work has resulted in electrically conductive plastics and lightweight composites with the strength of steel. One highlight of this work was the fabrication of polymer-nanotube fibres as strong as the strongest steel and over a hundred times tougher than Kevlar. This work was published in Nature in 2003 and received global publicity. In total Dr Coleman has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and one patent. Recently Dr Coleman and co-workers received over a million dollars from the prestigious Human Frontier Science Program to study interactions between nanotubes and biomolecules. He also just recieved an SFI PI award for 1.1 million to study exfiliation of nanotubes and graphene. Prof. Coleman is a joint lead PI (with Prof J Boland) on an SFI funded collaborative project with Hewlett Packard to develop flexible, transparent metal films for electrode applications.

Research Interest

AC CONDUCTIVITY; Applied physics; ARC DISCHARGE; BEHAVIOR; BLACK; BLENDS; BRIGHTNESS; CARBON; Carbon nanostructures; CARBON NANOTUBE; CARBON NANOTUBES; CARBON NANOTUBULE; Colloids; COMPOSITE; Composite materials; COMPOSITES; CONDUCTIVITY; CONJUGATED POLYMER; CONJUGATED POLYMERS; DEVICES; DIFFUSION-LIMITED AGGREGATION; DISORDERED SOLIDS; ELECTROLUMINESCENCE; ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE; ELECTRONIC-PROPERTIES; EXCITATIONS; FREQUENCY; Fullerenes; FULLERENES AND DERIVATIVES; GRAPHITE; INDIVIDUAL CARBON NANOTUBES; INFRARED AND RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY; LIGHT-EMITTING DIODES; Materials technology, engineering; MULTIPHOTON ABSORPTION SPECTROSCOPY; Nanotechnology; Nanotubes; OPTICAL ABSORPTION AND EMISSION SPECTROSCOPY; OPTICAL-PROPERTIES; ORGANIC POLYMER; PERCOLATION-THRESHOLD; PHOTO INDUCED ABSORPTION; PHOTOLUMINESCENCE; Photovoltaic systems, cells and modules manufacturing; Plastics; POLY(PHENYLENE VINYLENE) AND DERIVATIVES; POLYMER; Polymers; RESONANCE; SEPARATION; SINGLE; SINGLE-WALL; SPIN-RESONANCE; Textiles technology; TOOL; TRANSPORT