2009 Ph.D
Research
(1) Ordered packing of elliptical particle in 2-dimension
Self-assembly is a governing principle by which materials form. The patterns arising from self-assembly are ubiquitous in nature. The elliptical particle can self-assemble into crystals (nematic or sematic structure), because of its anisotropic interactions. We use a modified dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) by adopting an anisotropic repulsive potential on the basis of the conservative potential in DPD. We obtained sorts of structures through controlling the shape of the particles, the angular width of the repulsion and the strength of the repulsion.
(2) A single chain of multiblock copolymer self-assemble into patchy particle
Patchy particle is of interest in a wide variety of fields from materials science to biology. How can we improve the yield in materials synthesis to get the structure that we want? How do proteins in a cell come together to form complex structures with high accuracy? Patchy particles are of interest significance to both these questions. We use coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) and DPD method to study the behaviors of a single multiblock copolymer chain forming into the patchy particle in poor solvent. We can get some patchy particles of well symmetry by controlling the proportion of the components, the chain length, the property of the solvent, and interactions of the particles.
(3) Self-assembly of the patchy particles
We will study the behaviors of the patchy particles we have fabricated.