Soft Matter Blog

Dr Lee A. Fielding (MRSC, MIMMM, FHEA) is a Senior Lecturer in Polymer Chemistry in the Department of Materials at The University of Manchester and his research group is based in the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub within the Henry Royce Institute, where he is currently the Research Area Lead for Chemical Materials Design. He obtained an MChem in Chemistry from The University of Sheffield in 2008, which was followed by a PhD in 2012 from the same institution with Professor Steven P. Armes. He then worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher before taking up a Lectureship at The University of Manchester in 2015, where he is currently the Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies for Materials Science and Engineering and Programme Co-ordinator for the MSc in Polymer Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE). He is a committee member of the Joint Colloids Group and his research primarily involves the design, synthesis and applications of polymers and polymer colloids including research into sustainable waterborne coatings and adhesives, self-assembled colloidal materials and polymer-based materials for biomedical diagnostics and regenerative medicine.

Find more about his work via:

Website: Fielding Lab

Twitter @lee_fielding

Read Lee Fielding’s Emerging Investigator article http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM01534J

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter is inherently interdisciplinary and a natural home for reporting research into the preparation and characterisation of hydrogel systems with improved strengths, tuneable functionalities, and responsive behaviour. It’s broad readership, reputation and the efficient publication process all make it a great place to publish our research.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am very excited about the utilisation of new approaches to design polymer colloids and how they can be used to tackle interdisciplinary challenges or real-world problems. These challenges may be in developing advanced materials for a more sustainable society or for use in areas such as biomedical diagnostics or regenerative medicine.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

As we transition towards a more sustainable society the development and adaptation of materials that are designed with sustainability in mind, whilst retaining or improving on functionality, is a huge challenge that raises a great deal of academic, industrial, and societal questions.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Take the time to build your network! It really helps to share and learn from each other’s experiences, begin identifying and developing shared research interests, and ultimately make friends who also work in your discipline. I did this in part through firstly attending, and then organising, early career events such as the annual recent appointees in polymer science (RAPS) and early career colloids (ECCo) meetings.

Dr. Moyuan Cao is currently a professor and principal investigator at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nankai University, China. He received his B. Eng. Degree (2010) and M. Sc. Degree (2013) in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from Zhejiang University, China. In 2016, he received his Ph.D. Degree in materials sciences under the supervision of Prof. Lei Jiang at Beihang University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations (Tianjin, China) and Smart Sensing Interdisciplinary Science Center of Nankai University. He has published over 60 peer-review papers in Matter, Adv. Mater., Mater. Horiz., Adv. Funct. Mater., etc. His citation number is over 4100 with an H-index of 35. He serves as an Editorial member of Frontiers in Chemistry, Polymers, Chinese Chemical Letters and is an Advisory Board member of Materials Horizons. His present scientific interests are focused on the design and the applications of bio-inspired asymmetrical interfaces for fluid manipulation, including (1) Self-propelled fluid delivery on open interfaces; (2) Bubble manipulation on hydrophobic slippery surfaces; (3) Janus structures with superwettability for novel applications.

Find out more about his work via:

Website: https://mse.nankai.edu.cn/cmy_en/list.htm

Read Moyuan Cao’s Emerging Investigator article: http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM01547A

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Even as an undergraduate student, I knew Soft Matter as an important journal in the field of polymers, interfaces and fluid dynamics. As a traditional journal, Soft Matter has published a lot of theoretical and scientific papers which can serve as inspiration and provide references for analyzing related experimental phenomena. When my students feel puzzled about some theoretical examples to explain a result, I may ask them to find some references in Soft Matter. For this review article we published, lubricant-infused slippery surfaces have been considered as a new and useful functional interface for versatile applications (1). The design, mechanism, and applications of such interfaces are of interest, and the related information can be helpful for researchers in the fields of materials chemistry, physics, interfacial science and other areas. Therefore, in my opinion, such topics that combine theory and applications are suitable for Soft Matter.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

Our research is focused on fluid-manipulating interfaces: most of our ideas are inspired by nature, so we call them bioinspired interfaces. The first question in such research is to understand the natural evolution logic for special functions. Why does an organism adopt such complex structures for controlling fluid manipulation such as drinking and sweating?  After understanding this logic, artificial interfaces with similar or improved performance can be designed, such as the lotus-like Janus floater (2), the Pistia-inspired 3D floater (3), and the cactus-inspired fog collector (4). The most exciting part of bioinspired research is finally knowing nature’s secret and unraveling it with artificial design. It makes me feel “Nature, I know you”, just like the saying “Man thinks, God laughs”. We might not totally understand the inner logic of even one simple creature, but what we can do is illustrate one little aspect of nature’s design. The most challenging part of our research is knowing how to bridge fundamental research with practical applications. Although we have designed and fabricated lots of materials for fluid manipulation, the practical application of such materials in industrial processes is still lacking. We believe that our materials can be useful and valuable in our daily life. However, it is a very difficult and complicated process for us to transform fundamental results. We hope that we can propose one or two products relating to fluid manipulating interfaces some day.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

The most important question in the field of my research is why nature has an ultrahigh efficiency of mass transfer. Compared with our modern techniques, nature has a lot of advantages in mass transfer, energy conversion, information storage etc. With respect to fluid manipulation, nature’s strategy is always fantastic. Can you believe that the tiny proboscis of a butterfly or a mosquito sucks viscous liquid without blocking? Do you know how a tall tree can continuously uplift fluid to over 100m high? The ultrahigh efficiency and the ultralow energy consumption of nature’s design is both mysterious and enlightening for us.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Choose your own adventure, make your own brand, and stick with it…..

References

(1) Xinsheng Wang, Haoyu Bai, Zhe Li, Moyuan Cao*; Fluid manipulation via multifunctional lubricant infused slippery surfaces: principle, design and applications, Soft Matter, 2023, D2SM01547A.

(2) Yuyan Zhao, Cunming Yu, Hao Lan, Moyuan Cao*, Lei Jiang*; Improved interfacial floatability of superhydrophobic/superhydrophilic Janus sheet inspired by lotus leaf, Advanced Functional Materials, 2017, 27: 1701466.

(3) Yifan Yang, Haoyu Bai, Muqian Li, Zhe Li, Xinsheng Wang, Pengwei Wang*, Moyuan Cao*; An interfacial floating tumbler with a penetrable structure and Janus wettability inspired by Pistia stratiotes, Materials Horizons, 2022, 9: 1888.

(4) Haoyu Bai, Tianhong Zhao, Xinsheng Wang, Yuchen Wu, Kan Li, Cunming Yu*, Lei Jiang, Moyuan Cao*; Cactus kirigami for efficient fog harvesting: simplifying a 3D cactus into 2D paper art, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2020, 8: 13452.

Jinhye Bae is an Assistant Professor in the Department of NanoEngineering at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015, then worked in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on understanding the physical and chemical properties of polymeric materials to program their shape reconfiguration and responsiveness. Her research interests also include the integration of material characteristics into new structural design and fabrication approaches for applications in biomedical devices, soft robotics, actuators, and sensors. She has received several awards including the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award (2021) and the KIChE President Young Investigator Award (2021).

Find out more about her work via:

Group website: https://jbae.eng.ucsd.edu

Twitter: @jinhye_bae

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jinhye-bae-1388b01a/  

Read Jinhye Bae’s Emerging Investigator article http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM01104B

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter has been a go-to journal for publishing research on the topic of soft materials as it broadly covers the fields such as chemistry, physics, materials engineering, and biology, and includes experimental, theoretical, and computational research. Our research focuses on programmable shape reconfiguration and responsiveness of soft materials by the integration of functional materials in a controllable manner or their structural designs. I feel that Soft Matter is an excellent venue to disseminate our findings on this topic to a broad audience.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

The most exciting aspect of our research is elucidating new fabrication-structure-property relationships of stimuli-responsive soft materials through the use of advanced small-scale fabrication techniques at the micro and nano-scales. I think this question can be the most challenging to address. To tackle this, we work on understanding the differences in physical and mechanical behaviors and the responsiveness of these materials at different scales, which can open up new possibilities for their application in areas such as micro-actuators, biomimetic systems, and biomedical applications.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

In my opinion, important questions in the field of stimuli-responsive soft materials research include how much a system can be scaled down while maintaining its characteristics without becoming fragile, and how stimuli-responsive synthetic materials can be applied to engineer living systems by understanding their living/nonliving interface. In the longer term, understanding such questions will allow us to predict their properties and responsiveness in non-equilibrium conditions thus creating trainable and intelligent soft materials systems.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Do not hesitate to open up discussions with colleagues, mentors, and students – it can help you think outside the box. I have found that even failed trials or unexpected results can lead to exciting ideas, so be sure to set aside time to meet with your students and carefully listen to their observations and thoughts.

Dr. Siddhartha Das is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the science and engineering of soft and polymeric materials, interfacial transport, and small-scale fluid mechanics for fundamental discoveries (in ion dynamics at soft interfaces, liquid transport in soft-material-functionalized nanochannels, drop behavior on squishy surfaces, and charge-driven nanoparticle-lipid-bilayer interactions) and cutting-edge applications (in additive manufacturing). He received his B.S. (or B-Tech.) and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He has published more than 170 journal papers in world-renowned journals (such as Nature Materials, Science Advances, PNAS, PRL, JACS, APL, Matter, Nucleic Acid Research, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, and ACS Nano) and has received numerous awards and accolades (including promotion to Associate Professorship with an early tenure, election as a Fellow to the Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics, U.K., and Institution of Engineering and Technology, U.K., Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award of the A. James Clark School of Engineering, selection to contribute in the emerging investigator issue of the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics and Soft Matter, IIT Kharagpur Young Alumni Achiever Award, Hind Rattan award).

Find out more about his work via his group’s Twitter @smiel_umd

Read Siddhartha Das’s Emerging Investigator article: http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM00997H

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter is a wonderful venue for publishing exciting new works on soft materials, complex fluids, biological systems, etc. The present paper uses machine learning to unravel new characteristics of the water-water hydrogen bonds (HBs) inside the charged polyelectrolyte (PE) brush layer described using all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.  Papers in these areas of polymer systems and machine learning applications of soft matter systems have been extensively published in Soft Matter due to the sheer reach and the visibility of the journal to the soft matter and polymer science community. In that respect, I consider Soft Matter to be a perfect place to publish my research.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

A big focus of my present research is to explore the properties and behaviors of polyelectrolyte brushes and brush-supported water molecules and ions using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. Such all-atom simulations have been scarcely applied for PE brushes and my group was among the first to do so. Several of my previous papers have unraveled, for the first time, detailed properties and behaviors of PE-brush-supported water molecules and counterions. This present paper employs machine learning (ML) to take this endeavor further: ML enables us to identify structures and properties of water molecules and counterions inside the brush layer that are distinctly different from that outside the brush layer. In that way, we converge upon new definitions of water and ion properties inside the brush layer (e.g., the conditions that define water-water hydrogen bonds inside the brush layer). This is what I am really excited about at this moment: how the interplay of highly resolved atomistic simulations and machine learning algorithms enable us to obtain hitherto unknown properties of water and ions inside a PE brush layer. Such findings will lead to a paradigm shift of the way in which PE brushes are viewed by the research community: these brushes, henceforth, will be considered as a medium that triggers very rich water and ion science.

The most challenging part of my research is to connect these very interesting discoveries on PE-brush-supported ions and water to a larger scale description of the PE brush systems. Such a thing could possibly be accomplished by a multi-scale description of the PE brushes (where all-atom MD simulations and coarse-grained MD simulations are coupled) and ML methods will be useful for not only achieving such coupling but also for performing the sampling over a much larger time window.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

PE brushes have great potential for a multitude of applications in medical, chemical, engineering, and diagnostic sciences. The central tenet of these applications is the responsiveness of such brushes to environmental stimuli. These responses strongly depend on the structure of the PE brushes and the behavior and properties of the brush-supported water molecules and counterions. Given that we are now able to explore unprecedented atomistic details of such brush-supported water and ions, the most important questions to be answered in the field are as follows:

1. How the properties of such brush-supported water and ion properties can be regulated for ensuring desired responsiveness of the brushes (and hence achieving unprecedented efficiency in certain established brush-driven applications and develop new applications of brush-based systems) to environmental stimuli?
2. How to model reactive brushes and their responses to environmental stimuli?
3. How liquid and ion transport take place at such brush-grafted interfaces?
4. How machine learning can improve our predictions of all these effects?

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

For early-career scientists, my one piece of career-related advice will be to have fun in doing new things in research. Very often the burden of the tenure-track system (or similar conditions) forces early career scientists to do research on things that are safer and on which they have previous experience. However, in that way, the fun of discovering new things and contributing to new areas goes completely missing and makes the life of early career scientists more stressful and the work less exciting.

Dr. Ankur Gupta is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the principal investigator in the Laboratory of Interfaces, Flow and Electrokinetics (LIFE). His research interests include interfacial phenomena, complex fluids, multiphase flows and electrokinetics. His work has applications in energy storage, desalination, and lab-on-a-chip technologies. He is the recipient of NSF CAREER Award, Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) Award IIT Delhi, DARPA Riser Award, ACS PRF Doctor New Investigator Grant, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in Chemical and Biological Engineering at CU-Boulder, Publons Peer-Review Award, Hugh Hampton Young Fellowship, and President’s Gold Medal (IIT Delhi). He has given invited talks about his work at more than 25 universities and national labs across the USA, Canada, India, and Singapore.

Find out more about his work via:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ankurg90

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurg90/

Research group Twitter: https://twitter.com/LIFE_Boulder

Read Ankur Gupta’s Emerging Investigator article http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM01549H

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter is one of the best journals to share this work due its interdisciplinary yet dedicated readership. Many important contributions on diffusiophoresis were previously published in Soft Matter and thus we are excited to share our findings with the community.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

Prior literature on diffusiophoresis has primarily focused on the response of colloidal particles to one-dimensional solute gradients. The exciting aspect of this work is that it highlights that two-dimensional solute gradients can be spatially and temporally controlled to optimize colloidal banding. However, realizing some of these effects experimentally remains a challenge.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Some of the important questions in diffusiophoresis include the impact of particle shape and heterogeneity on mobility parameters, diffusiophoresis in complex fluids, and diffusiophoresis in two and three-dimensional gradients. Recent research has already begun to answer these questions and we anticipate that this area will remain quite active.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

I have learned to not compare my scientific journey with other early career scientists. While it is good to draw inspiration from the work of others, incessant comparison with others is generally detrimental and counterproductive.

Henry Chu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Florida (UF).  He obtained a M.Phil. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Hong Kong in 2012 under the supervision of Professors Chiu-On Ng and Kwok-Wing Chow.  He earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2017 under the supervision of Professor Roseanna Zia.  Following his Ph.D., he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Professors Aditya Khair, Robert Tilton, and Stephen Garoff.  In 2021, he joined UF.  The theme of his research is heterogeneous soft matter transport and design, covering topics such as complex fluid dynamics, colloid and interface science, electrokinetics, and rheology.  His research develops predictive multi-scale computational tools and fundamental theory to address emerging National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges for Engineering in these research areas, emphasizing on close collaboration with experimental groups to translate knowledge into applications.  His work has been recognized through several awards, including Clyde W. Mason Scholarship (Cornell), Research Travel Grant Award (Cornell), Student Member Travel Award (American Institute of Physics), and Global Faculty Fellowship (UF).  We welcome collaboration with academia, government agencies, and industry sponsors.

Find out more about his work via:

Website: http://www.chugroup.site/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HenryCWChu

Read Henry Chu’s Emerging Investigator article: http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D2SM01620F

How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?

Soft Matter is a great place to publish our Emerging Investigator article on diffusiophoresis in porous media.  In the article, we develop a mathematical model that predicts the diffusiophoretic motion of a colloidal particle driven by a concentration gradient of a binary monovalent electrolyte in porous media.  In addition to unveiling the impacts on colloid diffusiophoresis by porous media, our model predictions agree excellently with recent experiments, which otherwise could not be done with existing theories.  Our model could also predict diffusiophoresis in porous media filled with any monovalent electrolyte.  We believe that our model will motivate and benchmark future theories and experiments.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

As a computation/theory group focusing on soft matter transport and design, we are excited about leveraging our discoveries to develop practical applications and to explain novel transport phenomena.  Our strategy is always to develop models which are as simple as possible but can capture the key physics of a system.  Although these are not easy tasks, I enjoy tackling these challenges with my students and collaborators!

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

I think one promising future direction is diffusiophoresis in porous media, which is the theme of our Emerging Investigator article.  To date, excellent theories and experiments have been done on diffusiophoresis in free electrolyte solutions but not in porous media.  Many novel applications, however, involve diffusiophoresis in porous media.  I believe that the huge potential of diffusiophoresis will start a new wave of research that addresses both the fundamental and application aspect of the topic.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

I would share the advice that I gladly have from my respected research advisors 🙂  Work on things that you are passionate about.  Enjoy your work with your students and collaborators.

I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my research advisors, colleagues, and friends, who have given me great support in my early career, thank you!