Speaker
Zhibin Guan, Ph.D.
Speaker's Institution
University of California, Irvine
Date
2023-03-06
Time
4:00pm
Location
Chemistry A101
Mixer Time
3:45pm
Mixer Time
Chemistry B101E
Calendar (ICS) Event
Additional Information

About the Seminar

Many biopolymers not only have advanced mechanical properties such as high modulus, toughness, and elasticity, but more importantly, exhibit dynamic characteristics including adaptive, malleable, and self-healing properties. Following inspirations from the Nature, Guan lab has developed various biomimetic soft materials imbued with active and dynamic properties. In one system, we have designed a series of biomimetic modular polymers with folded nano-domains as the repeat units. In another example, we have developed strong and autonomous self-healing polymers using various supramolecular and dynamic covalent interactions. In contrast to previous designs, our system spontaneously self-heals as a single-component solid at ambient conditions without the need of any external stimulus, healing agent, plasticizer, or solvent.  Recently, we have also made significant progress in dissipative self-assembly of active materials. The overarching concept for all these projects is to build a direct link between microscopic molecular properties and macroscopic bulk performance. In this talk, I will discuss the design, synthesis, and property studies of these dynamic polymers including adaptive, active, and self-healing materials.

About the Speaker 

Zhibin Guan obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Peking University. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1994 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Following a postdoctoral stint at Caltech and a short career at DuPont, in 2000 he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at UC Irvine as an assistant professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2004, and to Full Professor in 2006. From 2006, he also became affiliated faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and the Department of Material Science at UC Irvine. He has received recognition of his research with several awards and fellowships, including the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, the Humboldt Bessel Research Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research work has been featured many times in scientific journals and newspapers such as C&EN News, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Forbes, etc. He served as the Chair for the 2018 Bioinspired Materials Gordon Research Conference in Les Diablerets, Switzerland.