Water-triggered spontaneous surface patterning in thin films of mexylaminotriazine molecular glasses

Surface patterning that occurs spontaneously during the formation of a thin film is a powerful tool for controlling film morphology at the nanoscale level because it avoids the need for further processing. However, one must first learn under which conditions these patterning phenomena occur or not, and how to achieve control over the surface morphologies that are generated. Mexylaminotriazine-based molecular glasses are small molecules that can readily form amorphous thin films. It was discovered that this class of materials can either form smooth films, or films exhibiting either dome or pore patterns. Depending on the conditions, these patterns can be selectively obtained during film deposition by spin-coating. It was determined that this behavior is controlled by the presence of water or, more generally, of a solvent in which the compounds are insoluble, and that the relative amount and volatility of this poor solvent determines which type of surface relief is obtained. Moreover, AFM and FT-IR spectroscopy have revealed that the thin films are amorphous independently of surface morphology, and no difference was observed at the molecular or supramolecular level. These findings make this class of materials and this patterning approach in general extremely appealing for the control of surface morphology with organic nanostructures.

The Financialization of Food: An Inquiry into the 2008-2011 Food Price Spikes

This dissertation investigates the question: has financial speculation contributed to global food price volatility since the mid 2000s? I problematize the mainstream academic literature on the 2008-2011 food price spikes as being dominated by neoclassical economic perspectives and offer new conceptual and empirical insights into the relationship between financial speculation and food. Presented in three journal style manuscripts, manuscript one uses circuits of capital to conceptualize the link between financial speculators in the global north and populations in the global south. Manuscript two argues that what makes commodity index speculation (aka ‘index funds’ or index swaps) novel is that it provides institutional investors with what Clapp (2014) calls “financial distance” from the biopolitical implications of food speculation. Finally, manuscript three combines Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and ‘the intellectual’ with the concept of performativity to investigate the ideological role that public intellectuals and the rhetorical actor the market play in the proliferation and governance of commodity index speculation. The first two manuscripts take an empirically mixed method approach by combining regression analysis with discourse analysis, while the third relies on interview data and discourse analysis. The findings show that financial speculation by index swap dealers and hedge funds did indeed significantly contribute to the price volatility of food commodities between June 2006 and December 2014. The results from the interview data affirm these findings. The discourse analysis of the interview data shows that public intellectuals and rhetorical characters such as ‘the market’ play powerful roles in shaping how food speculation is promoted, regulated and normalized. The significance of the findings is three-fold. First, the empirical findings show that a link does exist between financial speculation and food price volatility. Second, the findings indicate that the post-2008 CFTC and the Dodd-Frank reforms are unlikely to reduce financial speculation or the price volatility that it causes. Third, the findings suggest that institutional investors (such as pension funds) should think critically about how they use commodity index speculation as a way of generating financial earnings.