In this talk, I will first introduce the new state of matter of non-equilibrium hyperuniform fluid that we found in systems of active colloids, and its hydrodynamic theory. Afterwards, I will talk about the generalised hyperuniform fluid of reactive particles and its phase transitions, in which we found that the discontinuous absorbing transition of hyperuniform fluid does not have the pathway of nucleation and growth. This suggests a fundamental difference between the discontinuous transitions in equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems, which hopefully can inspire and/or motivate a new research direction on the kinetic pathway of non-equilibrium phase transitions.
 

Dr. Ni is an associate professor in the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology in Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He received his Ph.D of Physics in 2012 from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) working with Prof. Marjolein Dijkstra focusing on the computational study on the self-assembly of colloidal systems. From 2012 to 2014, he did his postdoc with Profs. Martien A. Cohen Stuart and Peter G. Bolhuis focusing on the self-assembly of fibril-forming polypeptides. In 2014, he was awarded the NWO VENI fellowship which is the most prestigious personal grant for young scientists in the Netherlands to start independent research lines. In 2016, he was awarded the Best Research Prize by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action – Flowing Matter [An annual prize for European Early Stage Researchers in soft matter within eight years after the date of PhD]. He made original contributions in various aspects of soft matter physics including non-equilibrium hyperuniform fluids, dynamic assembly of active colloids, programmable assembly and bio-sensing using DNA functionalized particles, novel vitrimers by design, etc., and his research has been published in a number of top scientific journals, e.g. Nature, Nature Communications , Science Advances, PNAS, PRL, JACS Au, etc.

Please contact phweb@ust.hk should you have questions about the talk.