Welcome

Macromolecular Materials

Polymers are all around us, ranging from the commodity plastics we take for granted, like polystyrene (Styrofoam), to biological polymers such as DNA and proteins. In most cases commodity synthetic polymer are made with poor control over the structure of the underlying macromolecules, but with great flexibility over the incorporated functional groups. In contrast, biological macromolecules such as DNA and proteins are made with incredible control over the structure of the molecule, but naturally occurring biomolecules are limited in the scope of functional groups, to for instance to a relatively 4 base pairs in DNA or 20 amino acids for proteins. In our group we expand the facile polymerizations used to make simple commodity polymers to powerful macromolecules with numerous applications.

Target Materials & Synthesis

The goal is to use industrially accessible syntheses to make materials with complexity and control over the structure approaching that of biological systems. We target our macromolecules to sustainability, advanced and high perfomance materials and biohybrid systems.

In all cases we use the techniques of organic chemistry to create the desired polymeric structure. In most cases we use controlled radical polymerization (reversible deactivation radical polymerization) to synthesize the polymeric backbone tailoring the polymer to the targeted application. Ongoing projects focus on:

Dynamic and reprocessable materials (Sustainability Applications)
Light driven (photochemical) polymerizations and polymer degradation (Sustainability)
Fueled and non-equilibrium polymers for (High performance materials)
Tailoring polymers for self assembly with lipids and membrane proteins (Bioapplications)
Protein Poylmer Bioconjugates (Bioapplications)