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Welcome
Welcome to the Raston Lab website. Here you will find everything from personal information on Colin and his team, to current areas of research, publications, patents and information on how to get involved.
The Raston Lab is situated in South Australia at Flinders University. We specialize in thin film flow chemistry delivering new methodology in both synthetic flow chemistry and materials chemistry. Visitors from both an academic and industrial background are welcome to get in touch.
News, videos and featured articles
The Sunday Project!
10Play
Sep/16 - As one of the winners of the IG Nobel prize, Prof Colin Raston was mentioned in the latest episode of The Sunday Project. Raston research with the Vortex Fluidic Device (VFD), since the unboiling egg discovery, has lead to better efficiency in cancer pharmaceuticals.
To know more about this, follow the link:
Recent Publications
M. Jellicoe et. al., Chiral Lemniscate Formation in Magnetic Field Controlled Topological Fluid Flows. Small 2025, 2409807.
X. Luo, et al. Sustainability-Driven Accelerated Shear- Mediated Immunoassay for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Detection. ChemSusChem 2024, e202401008.
B.M. Alotaibi, et al., Nanogold Foundry Involving High-Shear-Mediated Photocontact Electrification in Water. Small Sci., 2024, 2300312.
C. Chuah et al., Thin-film flow technology in controlling the organization of materials and their properties. Aggregate 2024, 5, e433.
X. Cao et al., Stability and Cleansing Function Enhancement of Organic Shampoo by a Vortex Fluidic Device. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2024.
S. M. Soria-Castro et al., Spinning Reactors for Process Intensification of Flow Photochemistry. ChemPlusChem 2024, e202300784.
N. Joseph et al., Vortex fluidic regulated phospholipid equilibria involving liposomes down to sub-micelle size assemblies. 2024, RSC Nanoscale Advances.
S. He et al., Nutrition and stability enhancement of yoghurt fortified with encapsulated algae oil through vortex fluidic device. LWT, 2024, 115413.
T.M.D. Alharbi and C. L. Raston, High conversion continuous flow exfoliation of 2D MoS2, Nanoscale Adv., 2023, 5, 6405.
D. Chen et al., Ligand Mediated, Spatially Confined Carbonization of Biomass Forming High-Performance Colloidal Carbon Dots. 2023, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
X. Luo et al., Printable Hydrogel Arrays for Portable and High-Throughput Shear Mediated Assays. 2023, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 15, 26, 31114–31123.
Gold star for green fluidic device.
Flinders News
In a surprise discovery, Flinders University nanotechnology researchers have produced a range of different types of gold nanoparticles by adjusting water flow in the novel vortex fluidic device – without the need for toxic chemicals...
To know more about this, follow the link:
A new spin on organic shampoo makes it sudsier, longer lasting.
ACS PressPacs
April/2024 - Colin Raston research group found that the spun shampoo’s lather lasted longer and cleaned human hair more thoroughly. And on a microscopic level, the spun shampoo contained more evenly dispersed oil droplets and glass microspheres compared to the original product. The team says that result confirmed the hypothesis that VFD processing could be a “green” one-step technique for more stable, emulsified viscous liquids..
To know more about this, follow the link:
Overseas Travel Fellowship
Aug/2023 - Congratulations to Xuan Luo, postdoc in Raston group for being awarded this Fellowship by The Australian Nanotechnology Network (ANN). Xuan will spend 2 months doing research at the University of California Irvine, alongside with Professor Greg Weiss.
To know more about this, follow the link:
Fulbright Australia 2023
Congratulations to Zoe Gardner, a PhD candidate in the Raston group for being awarded the South Australian Fulbright Scholarship for 2023. Zoe will travel to University of California Irvine to spend 6 months undertaking research with long-time Raston lab collaborator Professor Greg Weiss on a process for enzymes to break down waste chemicals using the vortex fluidic device, as well as specific enzymes which have been enhanced and prepared for this purpose.
To know more about Fulbright Scholarship, follow this link:
Featured Synthetic Methodology
G. Oksdath-Mansilla et al., Azide–alkyne cycloadditions in a vortex fluidic device: enhanced “on water” effects and catalysis in flow. Chemical Communications 57, 659-662, 2021.
S. J. Pye et al., Vortex Fluidic Ethenolysis, Integrating a Rapid Quench of Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalysts. Australian Journal of Chemistry 73, 1138-1143, 2020.
A. Igder et al., Vortex fluidic mediated synthesis of polysulfone. RSC Advances 10, 14761-14767, 2020.
J.M Phillips et. al., Chemoselective and Continuous Flow Hydrogenation in Thin Films Using a Palladium Nanoparticle Catalyst Embedded in Cellulose Paper. ACS App. Bio Mat. 2019, 2, 1, 488-494
Featured Materials Methodology
S. Rahpeima et al., Reduced graphene oxide–silicon interface involving direct Si–O bonding as a conductive and mechanical stable ohmic contact. Chemical Communications 56, 6209-6212, 2020.
I. K. Alsulam et al., High-Yield Continuous-Flow Synthesis of Spheroidal C60@Graphene Composites as Supercapacitors. ACS Omega 4, 19279-19286, 2019.
T. M. D. Alharbi et al. High Yielding Fabrication of Magnetically Responsive Coiled Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube under Flow. ACS Applied Nano Materials 2, 5282-5289, 2019.
K. Vimalanathan et al., Vortex fluidic mediated transformation of graphite into highly conducting graphene scrolls. Nanoscale Advances 1, 2495-2501, 2019.
Featured Application Methodology
J. Tavakoli et al.,Vortex fluidic mediated one-step fabrication of polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel films with tunable surface morphologies and enhanced self-healing properties. Science China Materials 63, 1310-1317, 2020.
J. Tavakoli et al., Vortex fluidic enabling and significantly boosting light intensity of graphene oxide with aggregation induced emission luminogen. Materials Chemistry Frontiers 4, 2126-2130, 2020.
S. He et al., Vortex fluidic mediated food processing. PLOS ONE 14, e0216816, 2019.
S. He et al., Continuous flow thin film microfluidic mediated nano-encapsulation of fish oil. LWT 103, 88-93, 2019.
Doctoral Thesis of Excellence
Flinders Vice-Chancellor's Award 2022
The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Doctoral Thesis Excellence recognises 12 Doctoral theses a year that have been of particularly high standard. PhD Matt Jellicoe was one of the recipients of the 2022 HDR Impact Prize that recognises the quality and impact of research. In addition, he was the joint winner for the CSE Nano Institute best thesis award. Congratulations!
To read the full article follow this link:
Recent Tweets
Chemical Science Journal Cover
The recent paper by M. Jellicoe et al., "Vortex induced mass transfer across immiscible phases" is featured on the back cover in Chem. Sci. issue 12, 2022.
To see the cover and read the paper, follow this link:
Raston Lab awarded at ISHHC18
Photographed is Lab member Scott Pye receiving a (shared) 2nd prize, for best poster at the recent ISHHC18 (International Symposioim on Relations between Homogenous and Heterogenous Catalysis, 2018).
The presented work was on continuous flow olefin metathesis, a collaboration between the Raston Lab and Justin Chalker.
Thanks to RACI, RSC and Springer for hosting the awards.
Fluidic device finds novel way to make oil and water attract!
Imagine making some liquids mix that do not mix, then unmixing them.
In one of the grand challenges of science, a Flinders University device which previously ‘unboiled’ egg protein is now unravelling the mystery of incompatible fluids; a development that could enhance many future products, industrial processes and even the food we eat.
BBC News story "Machine that 'unboils' eggs may help fight cancer"
A machine that can "unboil" protein-rich egg whites, winning an Ig Nobel Prize in 2015, may also have important medical applications, its inventor says...
ABC catalyst special on the VFD, "UNBOILING AN EGG!"
Unboiling an egg’ technology leads to new discoveries in renewable energy. You can’t unboil an egg, right? Wrong! Scientists from Flinders University in SA won an Ig Nobel Prize for successfully unboiling an egg. The technology....
Increasing anti-cancer activity with thin film flow chemistry!
With ovarian cancer, we found that this technology can increase the loading of second generation anti-cancer carboplatin drugs into delivery vehicles from 17 per cent to 75 per cent. This not only would have a direct benefit of reducing the negative side-effects which affect patient health, but of being able to use less of the drug.
Chemical Communications interview with Colin
Chem Comm probe what it is that makes Colin tick and what he plans to be doing when he is 100 years old.