About

Rui Wang is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, holding the title of The Cupola Era Endowed Chair. He completed his B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering at Zhejiang University in 2005 and 2008, respectively, and earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2014. Following his doctoral studies, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2015 to 2018. His research focuses on the theoretical understanding of the complex structural and dynamic behaviors of soft matter systems, which are fundamental components of living systems and are critical for materials addressing environmental, energy, and health challenges. Wang develops simple molecular theories to elucidate the physical insights behind complex behaviors in soft matter, including modeling at the molecular level and incorporating these models into statistical mechanics frameworks. His work involves the development of computational tools for the rational design of new materials such as antifouling membranes, batteries, stimuli-responsive gels, and biomedical materials. His current projects include electrostatics at interfaces, the structure and dynamics of ion-containing polymers, and complex polymer networks aimed at designing smart materials.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Chemical physics
• Materials science
• Thermodynamics
• Chemical engineering

Selected publications

• Anthracite Derived Lamellar Carbon with Enhanced Graphitization for Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Atomic-scale insights into the microscopic strengthening mechanisms of aluminum matrix composite during uniaxial tension deformation via molecular dynamics simulations

  Journal of Manufacturing Processes · 2025-09-03 · 1 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Electrostatic Correlation Augmented Self-Consistent Field Theory and Its Application to Polyelectrolyte Brushes

  Physical Review Letters · 2025-01-31 · 7 citations

  articleSenior author

  Modeling ion correlations in inhomogeneous polymers and soft matters with spatially varying ionic strength or dielectric permittivity remains a great challenge. Here, we develop a new theory that systematically incorporates electrostatic fluctuations into the self-consistent field theory for polymers. The theory is applied to polyelectrolyte brushes to explain abnormal phenomena observed in recent experiments. We show that ion correlations induce a nonmonotonic change of the brush height: collapse followed by reexpansion. The scaling analysis elucidates the origin as the competition between the repulsive osmotic pressure due to translational entropy and the attraction induced by ion correlations. We also clarify the absence of causal relationship between the brush collapse-reexpansion and the inversion of the surface electrostatic potential. Furthermore, strong ion correlations can trigger microphase separation, either in the lateral direction as pinned micelles or in the normal direction as oscillatory layers. Our theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental results reported in the literature.

  PublisherDOI

• Anomalous Hard-Wall Repulsion between Polymers in Solvent Mixtures and Its Implication for Biomolecular Condensates

  Physical Review Letters · 2025-06-13 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  The system of polymers dissolved in a mixture of different solvents is a widely used coarse-grained model to represent biomolecular condensates in intracellular environments. Here, we apply a variational theory to simultaneously control the center of mass of two polymers and perform the first quantification of their interactions in a mixture of solvent and cosolvent. While the polymer can completely dissolve in both solvents, strong polymer-cosolvent affinity induces the occurrence of polymer-assisted cosolvent condensation. Even though all the molecular interactions are soft, the potential of mean force between two polymer-cosolvent condensates exhibits an anomalous feature of hard-wall repulsion upon contact, which cannot be categorized into any existing types of interchain interactions. This repulsion is enhanced as either the affinity or the bulk cosolvent fraction increases. The underlying mechanism is cosolvent regulation manifested as a discontinuous local condensation of cosolvent as two condensates approach. The hard-wall repulsion provides a kinetic barrier to prevent coalescence of condensates and hence highlights the intrinsic role of proteins as a cosolvent in stabilizing biomolecular condensates.

  PublisherDOI

• Reversible Nanocomposite by Programming Amorphous Polymer Conformation Under Nanoconfinement

  Advanced Materials · 2025-01-07

  articleOpen access

  Nanoconfinements are utilized to program how polymers entangle and disentangle as chain clusters to engineer pseudo bonds with tunable strength, multivalency, and directionality. When amorphous polymers are grafted to nanoparticles that are one magnitude larger in size than individual polymers, programming grafted chain conformations can "synthesize" high-performance nanocomposites with moduli of ≈25GPa and a circular lifecycle without forming and/or breaking chemical bonds. These nanocomposites dissipate external stresses by disentangling and stretching grafted polymers up to ≈98% of their contour length, analogous to that of folded proteins; use both polymers and nanoparticles for load bearing; and exhibit a non-linear dependence on composition throughout the microscopic, nanoscopic, and single-particle levels.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Study on the Rheological Properties of Long‐Term Temperature‐Resistant and Saline‐Resistant Copolymer Systems Based on Hydrophobic Segments

  Journal of Applied Polymer Science · 2025-07-22

  article

  ABSTRACT To improve the temperature and saline tolerance of traditional copolymer fracturing fluids, two linear water‐soluble compounds were developed with acrylamide (AM) and acrylic acid (AA) as the backbone and the introduction of sodium p‐styrene sulfonate (SSS), a strong anionic monomer. Preparation of novel polyacrylamide‐based terpolymers (PMTA) by aqueous solution polymerization. In addition, quaternary copolymers (PFTA) with hydrophobic association structures were synthesized by adding functionalized nonionic hydrophobic monomers (FNS‐15) containing polyether structures on the basis of PMTA. The results showed that PFTA performed significantly better than PMTA in saline solution. The introduction of strong anionic and nonionic groups into PFTA contributes to the formation of a compact and ordered spatially associated network in saline solutions. The 0.6 wt% PFTA solution exhibited excellent saline water and temperature resistance, and the copolymer exhibited good viscoelasticity. Furthermore, in a 20% standard saline solution, the apparent viscosities of 0.6 wt% PFTA at 90°C, 120°C, and 150°C after 1 h of shearing at 170 s −1 are 90.1, 76.8, and 42.3 mPa s, respectively, confirming the system's excellent temperature and shear resistance. In conclusion, PFTA significantly outperforms PMTA in saline solutions, making it particularly suitable for polymer fracturing fluid applications in high‐temperature and high‐salinity reservoir environments.

  PublisherDOI

• Molecular origin of negative lithium transference in electrolytes with star-shaped multivalent anions

  Journal of Materials Chemistry A · 2025-12-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations illustrate that highly correlated cation–anion motion leads to negative t 0+ on the order of 1 in lithium electrolytes with star-shaped multivalent anions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Quantifying the critical micelle concentration of nonionic and ionic surfactants by self-consistent field theory

  Journal of Colloid and Interface Science · 2025-08-05 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Anomalous Long-range Hard-wall Repulsion between Polymers in Solvent Mixtures and Its Implication for Biomolecular Condensates

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-26

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The system of polymers in solvent mixtures is a widely-used model to represent biomolecular condensates in intracellular environments. Here, we apply a variational theory to control the center-of-mass of two polymers and perform the first quantification of their interactions in solvent mixtures. Even both solvent and cosolvent are good to the polymer, we demonstrate that strong polymer-cosolvent affinity induces the formation of a single-chain condensate. Even though all the molecular interactions are soft, the potential of mean force between two condensates exhibits an anomalous feature of long-range hard-wall repulsion, which cannot be categorized into any existing types of inter-chain interactions. This repulsion is enhanced as either the affinity or the bulk cosolvent fraction increases. The underlying mechanism is cosolvent regulation manifested as a discontinuous local condensation of cosolvent. The hard-wall repulsion provides a kinetic barrier to prevent coalescence of condensates and hence highlights the intrinsic role of proteins as a cosolvent in stabilizing biomolecular condensates.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Synthesis and salt thickening mechanism of salt-tolerant copolymers based on functional monomer synergy

  Research Square · 2025-04-25

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Chao Fang

  University of California, Berkeley

  54 shared

• Nitash P. Balsara

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  44 shared

• Chao Duan

  24 shared

• David M. Halat

  University of California, Berkeley

  20 shared

• Jeffrey A. Reimer

  University of California, Berkeley

  18 shared

• Nikhil R. Agrawal

  University of California, Berkeley

  15 shared

• Sanjay Kumar

  University of California, Berkeley

  12 shared

• Luofu Liu

  University of California, Berkeley

  12 shared

Labs

• Wang GroupPI

Education

• PhD, Chemical Engineering

  California Institute of Technology

Awards & honors

• First Prize in Natural Science Award, Ministry of Education,…
• Constantin G. Economou Memorial Prize, Caltech (2010)
• Frank J. Padden Award Finalist, American Physical Society (2…