News

Tanya Ekers successfully defended her PhD thesis

7 June 2011

Congratulations to Tanya Ekers who successfully defended her PhD thesis on 'Nanoindentation as a Method to Interrogate the Mechanical Properties of Polymer Coatings'. Polymer coatings are becoming increasingly important in technologies such as car body finishes, domestic appliances and natural wood flooring. Nanoindentation is widely used to measure the mechanical behaviour of coatings and thin films but polymer coatings present some unique problems due to the time dependence of their mechanical response. Their properties may also change due to environmental factors such as moisture and sunlight. Tanya has developed new test methods that help to overcome these problems and provide more reliable material property data. The project was funded by an EPSRC CASE award in collaboration with ICI Strategic Technologies (now Akzo Nobel). Tanya was supervised by Dr Andy Bushby.
Contact:Jonathon Hills
Email:j.hills@qmul.ac.uk

Updated by: James Busfield