Peter Ahlström

(click om my name for a photograph)
I am a senior lecturer (associate professor) in Chemical Physics at School of Engineering, University College of Borås.
This page contains a brief summary about my research and my teaching.

Teaching
How to reach me
My research
Some addresses that are useful to me (and perhaps somebody else)
Some less useful URL's

Teaching

The teaching at the School of Engineering covers the whole span from a preparatory year to masters and graduate student level and I am involved at most of those levels. Here I list links to a few of the courses where I am involved at the moment. If no link is given below the course home page is found via PingPong

Fundamental Chemistry (Kemi bas)
Fundamental Physics (Fysik bas)
Documents for the Thermodynamics course at University College of Borås (temporary location, everything is and will be accessible in PingPong)
Documents for the Protein structure and dynamics course at University College of Borås
Documents for the Protein Modelling part of the Molecular Biotechnology course at University College of Borås

Other tasks

Swedish delegate in the Working Party on Thermodynamics and Transport Properties of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering
Deputy member of the disciplinary committee of the University College of Borås
Member of the board of the local trade union (SACO/SULF) and local representative of the Union of Swedish Engineers at the UCB

My research interests

(Back to table of contents)

Being a simulant my interest is directed towards computer simulations at the border between physics and chemistry
especially concerning (multiscale modelling of) polymers and phenomena at surfaces and intefaces. Most present projects are performed using the computational resources at BRÄS.

In 2005 we arranged an international meeting on polymer modelling. The conference booklet with all the abstracts (NB! 1.5 MB) can be downloaded here.

Ongoing research projects:

Multiscale modelling of polymeric nanocomposites - a project financed by the Swedish knowledge foundation (KK-stiftelsen). It is a collaboration between Prof. Mikael Skrifvars, Prof. Kim Bolton and me. It aims at using multiscale modelling to predict properties of polymeric nanocomposite materials in a hierarcical way, starting at an atomistic level going up to macroscopic materials properties. The post-doc working on this project is Dr. Nils-Krister Persson [For more information follow the link above]

Modelling of degradation of polyethylene high voltage insulators in presence of water using a combination pf Monte Carlo simulations techniques (with Kim Bolton and Erik Johansson (graduate student))). As a by-product an investigation on the formation of water clusters in equilibrium with water was made. This project is a collaboration with the groups of Professor Stanislaw M Gubanski (High Voltage Engineering) and of Professor Thomas Hjertberg (Polymer Technology) at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The simulations are performed in collaboration with the group of Prof. Doros N. Theodorou in Athens, Greece.

The project is sponsored by the National Graduate School for Materials Science at Chalmers.

Water clustering in decane containing two ions in equilibrium with liquid water.
Typical snapshots of clusters in decane at 400 K. Cl^- is shown in yellow, Na⁺ in dark green, water in red and white and decane in green. The Na⁺--Cl^- separations are 15, 20 and 25 Å (top to bottom panels). Note that one cluster containing water and ions is formed at small ion-ion distance whereas two clusters (one around each ion) are formed if the separation is larger.

(from a recently published study that shows that the presence of ions in hydrocarbons (or polyethylene) will lead to the formation of water clusters in the organic phase)

E Johansson, K Bolton, D N Theodorou and P Ahlström
Formation of rodlike structures of water between oppositely charged ions in decane and polyethylene
J. Chem. Phys. 127 (2007), 191101.
E. Johansson, K. Bolton, P. Ahlström
Water absorption in polyethylene under external electric fields
Journal of Chemical Physics, 127, 024902 (2007)
E.Johansson, K. Bolton, D.N. Theodorou and P.Ahlström
Monte Carlo simulations of equilibrium solubilities and structure of water in n-alkanes and polyethylene
J. Chem. Phys. 126, 224902 (2007)
E.Johansson and P.Ahlström,
Atomistic simulation studies of polymers and water, in B Kågström et al. (eds), PARA 2006, Lecture Notes in Computational Science, 4699 (2007), 59-65.
E. Johansson, K. Bolton, P. Ahlström, Simulation of water vapour clusters in direct equilibrium with liquid water, Computer Physics Communications, 169 (2005) 54-56.
E. Johansson, K. Bolton, P. Ahlström, Simulations of Vapor Water Clusters at vapor-liquid equilibrium, Journal of Chemical Physics, 123 (2005), 024504.

Some recently finished research projects

Modelling of phase equilibria (together with Tyrone McKnight and Deresh Ramjaugernath in Durban, South Africa and Kim Bolton) [For more information follow the link above] In this study we concentrate on modelling vapour-liquid equilibria (VLE) of multicomponent mixtures of organic molecules. The simulations were performed in collaboration with Dr Thijs Vlugt, now at University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
- T. McKnight, P.Ahlström, M. Starzak, T. Vlugt, D.Ramjugernath, K. Bolton, Simulating 1-alkene binary vapor-liquid equilibrium using three transferable force fields., Fluid Phase Equilibria Vol 232 (2005), 136-148
Studies of oligomers and polymers of propylene oxide via MD simulations (Project in cooperation with Göran Wahnström at Materials and surface theory as well as the Materials physics group in Göteborg). Molecular dynamics simulations were performed and the results used to interpret neutron diffraction data for the polymers.

A picture of 21 PO₄₅ molecules (propylene oxide polymer) after a few hundred ps of simulation.
- P. Ahlström, G. Wahnström, P. Carlsson, S. Schantz, A. Brodin, F. Maurer and L. Torell, Low frequency vibrations in monomers, dimers and polymers of propylene glycol, Phil.Mag.B, 77 (1998), 699-707.
A. Brodin, L. Torell, P. Ahlström, G. Wahnström, Raman scattering from systems of linear chain molecules (PPO) of different length: a comparison with MD simulations, Phil.Mag.B, 77 (1998) 709-716.
P. Ahlström, O. Borodin, G. Wahnström, E. Wensink, P. Carlsson & G.D. Smith, Molecular Dynamics studies of poly(propylene oxide) using a new quantum chemical force field. J.Chem.Phys., 112 (2000) 10669-10679
C. Tengroth, P. Carlsson, D. Engberg, P. Ahlström*, G.Wahnström, W.S.Howells, L.Börjesson, The segmental and rotational dynamics of PPO, above the glass transition, investigated by Neutron Scattering and Molecular Dynamics simulation, Soft Materials, 3 (2005), 1-20.
Modelling of the crystallization of amorphous water (ice) adsorbates (with Patrik Löfgren Dinko Chakarov, Jukka Lausmaa and Bengt Kasemo in the Chemical Physics Group in Göteborg). In this study the sublimation rates of water vapour from thin water films (less than a hundred monolayers) on several substrates, but mainly monocrystalline platinum (111 surface), was followed. From these data we could conclude about the localization of the nucleation and the thermodynamics of the crystallization of amorphous solid water.
- P. Löfgren, P. Ahlström., D.V. Chakarov, J. Lausma and B. Kasemo: Substrate Dependent Sublimation Kinetics of Mesoscopic Ice Films, Surf. Sci. Lett., 367 (1996) L19-L25
P.Löfgren, P. Ahlström, J. Lausma, B. Kasemo D. Chakarov*: Crystallization Kinetics of Thin Amorphous Water Films on Surfaces, Langmuir, 19 (2003) 265-274.
P. Ahlström, P. Löfgren, J. Lausma, B. Kasemo, D.V. Chakarov: Crystallization Kinetics of Thin Amorphous Water Films on Surfaces: Computer Modeling and Thermodynamics. Physical Chemistry - Chemical Physics, 6 (2004), 1890-1898.