报告人：Zuowei Wang

主持人：刘庚鑫 特聘研究员

时  间：2025年7月31日（周四）13:30

地  点：复材新大楼A212学术交流室

报告人介绍：Dr Zuowei Wang is a faculty member in the University of Reading, UK. He obtained his PhD degree in Theoretical Physics from Fudan University, and has been working in Fudan, CNRS Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipoli (France), Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Germany), Universities of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Michigan-Ann Arbor (USA). His research interests are focused on multiscale computer simulation and theoretical modelling of polymeric and soft matter systems, including charged and entangled polymers, supramolecular polymer networks, surfactant and lipopeptide micelles, dipolar colloidal suspensions, etc. His research works are funded by EPSRC, UoR and international collaboration grants and published on PNAS, PRL, Macromolecules, Science Advances, J. Rheology, etc. He is on the international advisory, editorial and referee boards for various scientific journals, international research funding agencies and doctoral training.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/maths-and-stats/staff/zuowei-wang

报告摘要：Smart polymer materials that exhibit complex biomimetic behaviors have been the focus of intensive research over the past decades, contributing to broaden our understanding of how living systems function under nonequilibrium conditions. We developed an experimental paradigm by using a physical-chemical system, Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) self-oscillating hydrogel, to study the interplay between chemical and mechanical oscillations whose important role was recently recognized in cell-to-cell communications. In the absence of external interference, our experimental results demonstrated that chemical and mechanical self-oscillations in BZ hydrogels are inherently asynchronous, that is, there is a detectable delay in swelling−deswelling response after a change in the chemical redox state. Our theoretical calculations suggested that such delay effect may originate from the rate-limited reactant diffusion and solvent migration processes, which was not considered in previous theoretical models. By cyclically applying external mechanical stimulation to the BZ hydrogels, we found that when the oscillation of a gel sample entered into harmonic resonance with the applied oscillation during stimulation, the system kept a “memory” of the resonant oscillation period and maintained it post stimulation, demonstrating an entrainment effect. More surprisingly, by systematically varying the cycle length of the external stimulation, we revealed the discrete nature of the stimulation-induced resonance and entrainment behaviors in chemical oscillations of BZ hydrogels, i.e., the hydrogels slow down their oscillation periods to the harmonics of the cycle length of the external mechanical stimulation. The harmonic resonance behaviors under stimulation can be well described by our theoretical model with the incorporation of delayed mechanical response effects. Our finding paves a way of using smart active materials as chemical engines to produce mechanical force bridging active materials with biological discoveries in chemomechanical coupling.