报告题目：复合凝聚物的动力学：从聚合物动力学到液滴粗化
报 告 人：陈伸升(香港科技大学助理教授）
报告时间：2025年7月15日（星期二）上午11:00
报告地址：五山校区科技园2号楼324报告厅
邀 请 人：周嘉嘉教授
邀请单位：前沿软物质学院
报告摘要:
Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of charged macromolecules in aqueous environments leads to the formation of polymer-rich coacervates, or biocondensates, which play crucial roles in both material science and biology. Understanding the dynamics of these coacervates — ranging from polymer dynamics within the coacervate phase to the nonequilibrium dynamics of droplet coarsening — is essential for elucidating key processes such as condensate evolution, aging, and viscoelastic properties. Despite significant advancements in the thermodynamics and structural characterization of complex coacervates, their dynamic behavior remains poorly understood. This complexity arises from the need to simultaneously consider hydrodynamics, electrostatics, and polymer connectivity, given that coacervates typically comprise 55% to 85% water and 15% to 45% polymers, alongside small ions.
In this talk, I will present our recent findings from advanced molecular dynamics simulations that reveal intriguing dynamical phenomena in complex coacervate systems. At the droplet level, I will discuss how varying initial conditions can lead to drastically different scaling laws in droplet coarsening during phase separation, providing insights into the ultra-fast LLPS dynamics observed in various experimental and natural contexts. On the polymer chain level, I will demonstrate how charge sequences in intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) influence dynamics across multiple length and time scales within IDP condensates formed by self-coacervation. Contrary to the expectation that long-range interactions are heavily screened in dense semidilute polymer solutions, our findings indicate that hydrodynamics and electrostatics remain critical in IDP condensates, with their significance intricately linked to the charge sequences of the constituent IDPs.
个人介绍：
陈伸升，香港科技大学化学及生物工程学系助理教授，其研究团队专注于水性聚合物体系的计算与理论建模，尤其关注带电大分子系统（包括聚电解质、无序蛋白质和RNA）的热力学与动力学研究。在加入港科大前，陈教授曾于加州理工学院从事博士后研究，获纽约州立大学博士学位，本科毕业于上海交通大学。