Departmental Seminar by Professor Jianzhong Wu

Weak polyelectrolytes are a large class of macromolecules with ionizable sites that may either protonate or deprotonate depending upon the solution conditions such as pH, salt concentration and confinement. The stimuli-responsive behavior has been broadly utilized in “smart” polymeric systems to achieve specific functionality such as targeted drug delivery, thermal energy storage, layer-by-layer assembly, solid-liquid separation, and underwater adhesion. Whereas the practical use of weak polyelectrolytes is often sensitive to their microscopic behavior under confinement, the structure and thermodynamic properties of these systems remain poorly understood due to the strong coupling of ionization reaction and many-body correlations at both monomeric and polymeric scales. In this talk, I will report our recent efforts in developing a theoretical framework for describing various correlation effects on protonation/deprotonation equilibrium and the interfacial behavior of weak polyelectrolyte systems. The theoretical work will help close the knowledge gap between the fundamental understanding of weak polyelectrolytes in confined space and diverse technological applications.

Bio:
Professor Wu is a faculty member from the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. He received PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS and BS degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). His research is primarily focused on the development and application of statistical-mechanical methods, in particular classical density functional theory, for predicting the microscopic structure and physiochemical properties of inhomogeneous fluids, soft matter and biological systems.