Theoretical study of the dynamics of soft and biological matter

我的团队研究软材料中结构和动力学之间的相互作用，重点是聚合物和生物材料。我们使用复杂的分析方法和高性能计算的组合来解决这个多学科环境中的问题。软材料和生物材料中的结构-动力学关系是一个令人兴奋和丰富的理论和实验研究课题，其中有一系列具有挑战性的问题。例如，世界范围内正在进行一项正在进行的努力，研究嵌段共聚物作为纳米光刻的结构模板，以及用于生产金属纳米点和纳米线的有序阵列。这些模板有望将微电子电路缩小到10纳米级，低于传统光刻技术所能达到的水平。在这种应用中，当处理这些材料时，了解结构自组装需要多长时间是很重要的。这一提议的第二个方面集中在活性杆状细菌菌落的动力学和模式形成上，这些菌落形成了一类新的动态、活性物质。最后提出研究聚合物熔体中的纠缠，这是一个长期存在的重大挑战问题。通过发展和扩展非平衡统计力学的方法，在定量的水平上理解软材料的动力学是我的长期目标。

My group investigates the interplay between structure and dynamics in soft materials, with a focus on polymeric and biological materials. We use a combination of sophisticated analytical methods and high-performance computing to tackle problems in this multidisciplinary environment. The structure-dynamics relationship in soft and biological materials is an exciting and rich topic for theoretical and experimental study, with a diverse set of challenging problems. For example, there is an ongoing, world-wide effort to investigate block copolymers as structural templates for nanolithography, and for the production of ordered arrays of metallic nano-dots and nano-wires. These templates hold the promise of shrinking microelectronic circuits to the 10 nm scale, below that accessible to traditional photolithography. In such applications, when processing these materials it is important to understand how long it takes structures to self-assemble. A second aspect of this proposal focuses on the dynamics and pattern formation in of colonies of active rod-like bacteria, which form a new class of dynamic, active matter. Finally propose to study entanglements in polymer melts, a long-standing, grand challenge problem. Understanding the dynamics of soft materials at a quantitative level through the development and extension of the methods of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics is my long-term goal.