top of page

Intelligent Design of Autonomous Materials

The Intelligent Design of Autonomous Materials Group welcomes competitive and enthusiastic applicants to conduct cutting-edge research at HKUST. Interested persons with theoretical or computational background in Applied Mathematics, Physics, Biophysics, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, or Chemical Engineering are encouraged to send enquiries to Rui's email address at

ruizhang@ust.hk

art_work_defect.png

Our Research

Our society is currently facing unprecedented challenges in health, energy, and environment. And there is a strong demand in new materials which are renewable, multifunctional, light-weight and can interact with human more safely and more intelligently. Soft materials are a promising candidate for the above purpose. The overarching goal of the Computational Soft Matter Group is to harness soft materials, such as active matter, multiphase or porous media, liquid crystals, polymers, colloids, and mechanical metamaterials, to design next generation, autonomous materials and soft machines.

Specifically, our group will employ traditional and emerging computational methods, including machine learning, to propose novel soft materials with nontraditional functionalities, features and dynamics. Examples include active fluids with tailorable flow patterns, multiphase systems sensitive to specific stimuli, and origami materials with novel shape-changing behaviors in response to external fields. These new soft materials could find applications in soft robotics, wearable devices, space exploration, 4D printing, energy harvesting, smart buildings, sensing and diagnosis, and etc.

 

Our group strives to borrow the wisdom from biological systems and design synthetic materials and machines that are low-cost, green, biocompatible and intelligent. Our research is multidisciplinary, covering Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.

Jinghua Jiang, Oluwafemi Isaac Akomolafe, Xinyu Wang, Zhawure Asilehan, Wentao Tang, Zijun Chen, Jing Zhang, Ruijie Wang, Kamal Ranabhat, Rui Zhang# and Chenhui Peng#

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (37), e2402395121 – published on 4 September 2024

Entanglement in a soft condensed matter system is enabled in the form of entangled disclination lines by using colloidal particles in nematic liquid crystals. These topological excitations are manifested as colloidal entanglement at equilibrium. How to further utilize nonequilibrium disclination lines to manipulate colloidal entanglement remains a nontrivial and challenging task. In this work, we use experiments and simulations to demonstrate the reconfigurations of nematic colloidal entanglement in light-driven spatiotemporal evolutions of disclination lines. Colloidal entanglement can sense subtle changes in the topological structures of disclination lines and realize chirality conversion. This conversion is manifested as the “domino effect” of the collective rotation of colloids in the dislination lines. By programming the topological patterns and the geometry of the disclination lines, colloidal entanglement can be assembled and split. More remarkably, a double-helix entangled structure can be formed by controlling the changes in the morphology of the disclination lines. Thus, this work will provide opportunities to program colloidal composites for smart materials and micromachines.

bottom of page