Memories of George Barton

This address was given by the Attorney-General, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, at the special sitting of the High Court in Wellington to honour Dr George Barton QC on Wednesday 6 July 2011

A Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament?

The integrity of a government is largely judged by the conduct of its members. In recent times, it could be argued, that this has been wanting. The author argues tlhat this is in part due to the lack of clarity in the rules of conduct applying to members of Parliament, and the lack of sanctions (and corresponding lack of adherence) to those rules which do exist. After examining the approach taken by the Ontario, Canadian and United Kingdom legislatures, a statutory code of conduct based on the Ontario model is advocated for New Zealand

Solvatochromism in Perylene Diimides; Experiment and Theory

We report an experimental and computational investigation into the solvatochromism of a perylene diimide derivative. The alkyl swallowtail substituents allowed solubility in many solvents of widely differing polarity, with a complicated resultant behaviour, illustrating both negative and positive solvatochromism as a function of dielectric constant. Luminescence quantum yield and optical absorption linewidth displayed an inverse correlation, indicating varying degrees of intermolecular aggregation, and a remarkably similar trend was found between the peak absorption wavelength and the solvent boiling point, illustrating the dependency of aggregation on the solvent interactions. These outline trends may be parameterised by an empirically derived dimensionless quantity, as a tool to be used in more sophisticated future models of solvatochromism in small molecule chromophoresPeer reviewe

Generating Bulk-Scale Ordered Optical Materials Using Shear-Assembly in Viscoelastic Media

We review recent advances in the generation of photonics materials over large areas and volumes, using the paradigm of shear-induced ordering of composite polymer nanoparticles. The hard-core/soft-shell design of these particles produces quasi-solid “gum-like” media, with a viscoelastic ensemble response to applied shear, in marked contrast to the behavior seen in colloidal and granular systems. Applying an oscillatory shearing method to sub-micron spherical nanoparticles gives elastomeric photonic crystals (or “polymer opals”) with intense tunable structural color. The further engineering of this shear-ordering using a controllable “roll-to-roll” process known as Bending Induced Oscillatory Shear (BIOS), together with the interchangeable nature of the base composite particles, opens potentially transformative possibilities for mass manufacture of nano-ordered materials, including advances in optical materials, photonics, and metamaterials/plasmonics