活性胶体/聚合物的玻璃态结构与动力学

活性胶体玻璃是近年来玻璃态研究中的一个新热点。它包含了两种相反的非平衡产生机制：胶体粒子运动被自主驱动（活性）和高密度下胶体粒子运动被限制（牢笼现象），因而成为软物质和非平衡统计物理中一个很有价值的研究体系。这方面的研究工作才刚刚起步，很多问题需要深入的探索和研究，理论工作也很缺乏。本项目提出把描述胶体和聚合物玻璃化转变与动力学的微观非线性朗芝万方程理论拓展到活性胶体/聚合物玻璃。结合理论和模拟的手段，从微观层次上认识活性玻璃的结构和动力学特征。我们将围绕活性玻璃与普通热力学玻璃的差异这一主题来开展研究，探讨胶体粒子或聚合物单体活性参数如自驱力大小和持久时间在其中所起的不同作用。我们的研究体系包括活性胶体玻璃、活性与非活性混合胶体玻璃和活性聚合物玻璃。另外，边界和受限效应一直是玻璃材料研究中很受关注的一个课题。边界对活性物质有特别的影响，我们将探讨不同受限尺度和边界形状下活性玻璃的行为。

Active colloidal glass is an emerging hot topic in the research of glassy state. The nonequilibrium property of active colloidal glass comes from two opposite origins: self-propulsion of the motion of colloidal particles vs. arrested dynamics of colloidal particles at high density. Therefore, active colloidal glass is a valuable research model in soft matter and nonequilibrium statistical physics. The research in this area is just started. There are a bunch of problems and questions to be explored. And, the theoretical understanding is lacking. In this proposal, we plan to extend the microscopic nonlinear Langevin equation theory for colloidal and polymer glasses to the active ones. By integrating theoretical and numerical methods, we are able to learn the properties of structure and dynamics of active glasses in the microscopic level. The theme of the study is the differences between the ordinary thermal glass and active glass. We will focus on the different roles that the amplitude and the persistence time of the driving force, which are quantities characterizing the activity of colloidal particles or monomers, play in the glassy behaviors. The systems we plan to study include active colloidal glass, mixture of active and passive colloidal glasses and active colloidal polymer glass. Since the effect of boundary and confinement on the glassy behavior has received many concerns and moreover the boundary has strong and novel influence on active matter, we are also going to study the effect of confinement size and boundary shape on the properties of active glass.