Date Oct 23, 2024, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Location Bowen Hall Auditorium 222 Details Event Description The Interplay Between Mechanics and Chemistry in “Living” Polymers AbstractA salient feature of living materials is their ability to grow and evolve their structures with time. As a vital adaptation, some organisms, such as Planaria, would not only increase in size, but also shrink and reverse the growth to preserve only the parts necessary to survive in nutrient-deficient environments. In contrast, synthetic objects formed through milling, molding, assembling, printing, extruding, etc., display fixed sizes and properties. While various methods have been developed to create new dynamic constructs that change size, shape, and physical properties in response to stimuli, these materials ultimately return to their initial size and shape after reconfiguration, and their properties cannot be post-modulated after fabrication. In this talk, I will discuss our most recent work in developing a new class of “growing” polymers with the ability to controllably increase/decrease in mass and size, change multiple physical and chemical properties on-demand, and decompose when needed, mimicking the remarkable abilities of living organisms. Such “living” polymers are realized by introducing two essential biological mechanisms into the realm of synthetic materials: (1) nonequilibrium dynamic growth and (2) an osmotically driven “nutrient” supply and incorporation mechanism to support the growth. The performance of the system is orchestrated by a series of coordinated reactions, diffusion, deformation, and network remodeling. Through integrated theoretical modeling, experimental characterization and polymer synthesis, we decipher the coupled chemo-mechanical growth mechanism and explore the guiding rules toward accurate control in these materials.BioDr. Yuhang Hu is currently an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Hu received her B.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P. R. China in 2005, M.S. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2007, M.S degree in Applied Physics from Harvard in 2009, and PhD degree in Engineering Sciences from Harvard in 2011. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Wyss institute at Harvard from 2011-2014 studying Bio-inspired Materials. In 2015, she joined the faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign as an assistant professor and moved to Georgia Tech in 2018. Her research focuses on Chemomechanics of Soft Active Materials, an interdisciplinary area between Mechanics and Polymer Chemistry. Her work involves both theory and experiment. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR YIP Award, Extreme Mechanics Letters Young Investigator Award, Journal of Applied Mechanics Award, ASME Sia Nemat-Nassar Early Career Award, ASME Eshelby Mechanics Award, SEM James W. Dally Young Investigator Award, SEM Wolfgang Knauss Young Investigator Award and SES Young Investigator Medal. All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:00 -1:00 p.m. in the Bowen Hall Auditorium Room 222. A light lunch is provided at 11:30 a.m. in the Bowen Hall Atrium immediately prior to the seminar.