报告人介绍：Dr Zuowei Wang is a faculty member in the University of Reading, UK. He obtainedhis PhD degree in Theoretical Physics from Fudan University, and has beenworking in Fudan, CNRS Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipoli (France), Max-PlanckInstitute for Polymer Research (Germany), Universities of North Carolina-ChapelHill and Michigan-Ann Arbor (USA). His research interests are focused onmultiscale computer simulation and theoretical modelling of polymeric and softmatter systems, including charged and entangled polymers, supramolecularpolymer networks, surfactant and lipopeptide micelles, dipolar colloidalsuspensions, etc. His research works are funded by EPSRC, UoR and internationalcollaboration grants and published on PNAS, PRL, Macromolecules, ScienceAdvances, J. Rheology, etc. He is on the international advisory, editorial andreferee boards for various scientific journals, international research fundingagencies and doctoral training.

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

报告摘要：Smartpolymer materials that exhibit complex biomimetic behaviors have been the focusof intensive research over the past decades, contributing to broaden ourunderstanding 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 interplaybetween chemical and mechanical oscillations whose important role was recentlyrecognized in cell-to-cell communications. In the absence of externalinterference, our experimental results demonstrated that chemical andmechanical self-oscillations in BZ hydrogels are inherently asynchronous, thatis, there is a detectable delay in swelling−deswelling response after a changein the chemical redox state. Our theoretical calculations suggested thatsuch delay effect may originate from the rate-limited reactant diffusion andsolvent migration processes, which was not considered in previous theoreticalmodels. By cyclically applying external mechanical stimulation to the BZhydrogels, we found that when the oscillation of a gel sample entered intoharmonic resonance with the applied oscillation during stimulation, the systemkept a “memory” of the resonant oscillation period and maintained it poststimulation, demonstrating an entrainment effect. More surprisingly, bysystematically varying the cycle length of the external stimulation, werevealed the discrete nature of the stimulation-induced resonance andentrainment behaviors in chemical oscillations of BZ hydrogels, i.e., thehydrogels slow down their oscillation periods to the harmonics of the cyclelength of the external mechanical stimulation. The harmonic resonance behaviorsunder stimulation can be well described by our theoretical model with theincorporation of delayed mechanical response effects. Our finding paves a wayof using smart active materials as chemical engines to produce mechanical forcebridging active materials with biological discoveries in chemomechanicalcoupling.