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Creators/Authors contains: "Zhang, Rui"

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  1. ; ; ; ; ( , Soft Matter)
    Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton and underpin many important biological processes. Synthetic experiments that recapitulate the essential features of such active systems have been the object of study for decades as their simple rules allow us to elucidate the physical underpinnings of collective motion. One system of particular interest has been active nematic liquid crystals (LCs). Because of their well understood passive physics, LCs provide a rich platformmore »to interrogate the effects of active stress. The flows and steady state structures that emerge in an active LCs have been understood to result from a competition between nematic elasticity and the local activity. However most investigations of such phenomena consider only the magnitude of the elastic resistance and not its peculiarities. Here we investigate a nematic liquid crystal and selectively change the ratio of the material's splay and bend elasticities. We show that increases in the nematic's bend elasticity specifically drives the material into an exotic steady state where elongated regions of acute bend distortion or “elasticity bands” dominate the structure and dynamics. We show that these bands strongly influence defect dynamics, including the rapid motion or “catapulting” along the disintegration of one of these bands thus converting bend distortion into defect transport. Thus, we report a novel dynamical state resultant from the competition between nematic elasticity and active stress.« less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available July 20, 2023
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications)
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available June 14, 2023
  3. ; ; ; ( , The 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE2021))
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 16, 2023
  4. ; ; ; ( , IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing)
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 3, 2023
  5. ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , The 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE2021))
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 16, 2023
  6. ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , The 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE2021))
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 16, 2023
  7. ; ; ( , Science Advances)
    Topological defects in patterned active nematics can be harnessed to perform logic operations.
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available February 25, 2023
  8. ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , Polymers)
    In the current work, we combined different physical and chemical modifications of carbon nanofibers through the creation of micro-, meso-, and macro-pores as well as the incorporation of nitrogen groups in cyclic polyacrylonitrile (CPAN) using gas-assisted electrospinning and air-controlled electrospray processes. We incorporated them into electrode and interlayer in Li–Sulfur batteries. First, we controlled pore size and distributions in mesoporous carbon fibers (mpCNF) via adding polymethyl methacrylate as a sacrificial polymer to the polyacrylonitrile carbon precursor, followed by varying activation conditions. Secondly, nitrogen groups were introduced via cyclization of PAN on mesoporous carbon nanofibers (mpCPAN). We compared the synergistic effectsmore »of all these features in cathode substrate and interlayer on the performance Li–Sulfur batteries and used various characterization tools to understand them. Our results revealed that coating CPAN on both mesoporous carbon cathode and interlayer greatly enhanced the rate capability and capacity retention, leading to the capacity of 1000 mAh/g at 2 C and 1200 mAh/g at 0.5 C with the capability retention of 88% after 100 cycles. The presence of nitrogen groups and mesopores in both cathodes and interlayers resulted in more effective polysulfide confinement and also show more promise for higher loading systems.« less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2023
  9. ; ( , IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems)
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available January 1, 2023
  10. ; ; ( , The Journal of Organic Chemistry)
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available January 21, 2023