Ni, Ran - Nanyang Technological University - School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

个人简介

Ph.D., Physics, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 2012 Assistant Professor Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Physics & Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (by courtesy) Affiliated faculty member of the Centre for Optical Fibre Technology Nanyang Technological University

研究领域

1. Dynamic assembly of active matter Active matter are these particles or objects which can convert biological or chemical energy to drive their motion. Therefore, active matter systems are intrinsically out of equilibrium, and the special non-equilibrium dynamics has driven the formation of many interesting emergent structures and collective dynamics in systems of active matter. We are aiming to study the dynamic non-equilibrium self-assembly in active matter systems and use active matter as a tool to manipulate and drive the self-assembly of passive matter systems in order to introduce new techniques using active matter as an agent to help the fabrication of functional materials. In particular, we are interested in the glass transition, crystallisation and the effective interaction in active matter systems. 2. Glass transition of anisotropic colloids As stated by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Philip W. Anderson, in 1995, “The deepest and most interesting unsolved problem in solid state theory is probably the nature of glass and the glass transition.” However, the direct investigation on the glass transition of atomic or molecular systems is extremely difficult, since atoms and molecules are very small and moving very fast. Nowadays colloidal systems have been widely employed to study the physics of glass transition, as colloidal particles are much larger and moving much slower, and one can directly use optical microscope to track the real time motion of each colloidal particle individually. Recently, in systems of colloidal ellipsoids, we found that there are a new type of orientational glass transition as well as a number of structural signatures of dynamic heterogeneities in monolayers of colloidal ellipsoids. This suggests that many interesting dynamic behaviour as well as structural transitions can be expected in the glass of anisotropic colloids. We are using computer simulation to explore the novel glass transition of anisotropic colloids to gain further understanding of the physics of glass transition and help to design new glass materials with novel properties using anisotropic colloids. 3. Hierarchical self-assembly of anisotropic colloids In past decades, breakthroughs in particle synthesis have produced a variety of anisotropic building blocks, which can possibly form many new hierarchical super structures offering new possibilities of fabricating novel colloidal functional materials. However, the formation of the hierarchical structures of anisotropic colloids remains highly challenging in experiments, while they have been theoretically proven stable. This has severely hindered the further fabrication of new functional materials using these anisotropic particles. Therefore, we are trying to use computer simulation to study the hierarchical self-assembly of anisotropic colloids to help design new experimental techniques for fabricating novel functional materials using anisotropic particles. 4. Self-assembly of fibril-forming polypeptides While, perhaps surprisingly, most of the proteins, even very short peptides, share the general ability of forming fibril structures under appropriate conditions, the interest in filamentous proteins originates to a large extent from their association with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. However, protein fibers also have promising applications in biomaterials. For instance, silk-collagen-like tri-block copolymers self-assemble into micrometer long fibrils, which form dilute gels with surprisingly high stiff modulus, serving as promising candidates for novel materials such as artificial tissues. The self-assembly of the protein fibrils is a highly hierarchical process consisting of both the folding of individual peptide and the assembly of protein fibrils, and the physics involved remains unknown. We are using computer simulation to study the self-assembly of fibril-forming polypeptides and have found a strong allosteric effect in the formation process of protein fibrils, which guides the future experimental fabrication of high quality protein fibrils.

近期论文

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Pablo Sampedro Ruiz, Qunli Lei and Ran Ni*; Melting and re-entrant melting of polydisperse hard disks, submitted (2018) arXiv Qunli Lei, Massimo Pica Ciamarra, and Ran Ni*; Non-equilibrium Strong Hyperuniform Fluids of Athermal Active Circle Swimmers with Giant Local Fluctuations, submitted (2018) arXiv Qunli Lei, Ran Ni*, and Yuqiang Ma; Self-assembled chiral photonic crystals from a colloidal helix racemate, ACS Nano, 12, 6860 (2018) arXiv Hao Hu, Pablo Sampedro Ruiz, and Ran Ni*; Entropy stabilizes floppy crystals of mobile DNA-coated colloids, Phys. Rev. Lett., 120, 048003 (2018) arXiv Zhan Ma#, Qunli Lei#, and Ran Ni*; Driving dynamic colloidal assembly using eccentric self-propelled colloids, Soft Matter, 13, 8940 (2017) arXiv Qunli Lei, Kunn Hadinoto, and Ran Ni*; Role of local assembly in the hierarchical crystallization of associating colloidal hard hemispheres, Phys. Rev. Materials, 1, 052601(R) (2017) arXiv Qunli Lei, Kunn Hadinoto, and Ran Ni*; Complexation of Polyelectrolytes with Hydrophobic Drug Molecules in Salt Free Solution: Theory and Simulations, Langmuir, 33, 3900 (2017) Chen Xie, Xu Zhen, Qunli Lei, Ran Ni and Kanyi Pu; Self-Assembly of Semiconducting Polymer Amphiphiles for In Vivo Photoacoustic Imaging, Adv. Funct. Mater., 27, 1605397 (2017) Ran Ni*, Nucleation in Colloidal Systems: Theory and Simulation, Self-Assembling Systems: Theory and Simulation, 288 (2016) WILEY-VCH, Edited by Li-Tang Yan [Invited Review] Bo Li, Feng Wang, Di Zhou, Yi Peng, Ran Ni, and Yilong Han; Modes of surface premelting in colloidal crystals composed of attractive particles, Nature, 531, 485 (2016) [Highlighted in Nature Physics] Ran Ni*, J. Mieke Kleijn, Sanne Abeln, Martien A. Cohen Stuart, and Peter G. Bolhuis, The competition between surface adsorption and folding of fibril-forming polypeptides, Phys. Rev. E, 91, 022711 (2015) arXiv Ran Ni*, Martien A. Cohen Stuart, and Peter G. Bolhuis, Tunable long range forces mediated by self- propelled colloidal hard spheres, Phys. Rev. Lett., 114, 018302 (2015) [Highlighted as Editors’ Suggestion] arXiv Ran Ni*, Martien A. Cohen Stuart, Marjolein Dijkstra, and Peter G. Bolhuis, Crystallizing hard-sphere glasses by doping with active particles, Soft Matter, 10 (35) 6609 (2014) [Highlighted as 2014 Soft Matter Hot Papers] arXiv Zhongyu Zheng, Ran Ni, Feng Wang, Marjolein Dijkstra, Yuren Wang and Yilong Han*, Structural signatures of dynamic heterogeneities in monolayers of colloidal ellipsoids, Nature Communications, 5, 3829 (2014)