Daniel Reid

Daniel studies and designs a variety of amorphous materials, including ultrastable glasses, organic photovoltaics, and auxetic metamaterials. Ultrastable glasses formed by a process of physical vapor deposition display kinetic stability equivalent to glasses that have been aged for many years. Daniel uses model systems to understand how the process of vapor deposition affects the underlying structure of the glass and how this structure can be controlled. Solution-processed organic photovoltaics are a potentially low-cost alternative to traditional silicon-based solar cells. The micro-scale morphology of organic photovoltaics is one of the main factors that controls device efficiently. To achieve ideal morphologies, an improved understanding of solubility in organic photovoltaic materials is essential. Daniel works to identify the key aspects of these structurally complex materials that control solubility in order to provide necessary insight to experimentalists. When one compresses a material in one dimension, intuition predicts that the material’s sides will bow outwards. In most cases, this intuition is correct. Daniel designs materials where the opposite happens. When the material is compressed, the sides bow inwards. If the effect is pronounced enough, the materials becomes locally very hard where compressed. Daniel works closely with experimentalists to validate the models he develops in simulation.

Daniel is also the lead developer of his group’s GPU-accelerated molecular dynamics software, DASH.