Prof. Stuart Rowan of the University of Chicago develops synthetic methods that allow access to new polymer architectures and studies how these architectures impact polymer properties. This research has potential societal benefit with regards to design and preparation of novel polymeric materials with desirable unique properties. The project involves graduate and undergraduate students, high school students from a local girl's high school, and students of under-represented groups from the inner city Cleveland Municipal School District (through the Envoys program). The integrated approach of this research provides students at all levels with an exciting learning environment and broad research experiences. In addition, Prof. Rowan and his research group design new demonstrations for the outreach program entitled "Natures Materials", which is part of the Cleveland Museum's "Winter Discovery Day" on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This program aims (i) to expose the local community to polymers and how Nature's materials can help us create a sustainable planet, and (ii) to train current graduate students on how to communicate and educate the general public and younger students about science and technology.
This research project, which is supported by the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, encompasses synthetic and metal-coordination chemistry, computational modeling, as well as polymer science and characterization. It focuses on the design, synthesis and characterization of polymers with doubly-threaded architectures where two chains are threaded through one macrocycle. The new synthetic methodology utilizes metal-ligand coordination as the thermodynamic driving force for the polymerization step and either dynamic covalent chemistry (in the form of ring closing metathesis) as the covalent fixing step to access the poly[n]catenanes or high yielding thiol-ene chemistry to access the doubly threaded poly[3]rotaxanes and slide ring gels. The polymers will have the ability to expand/contract without significantly altering bond or torsion angles and as such it is predicted they will exhibit unusual viscoelastic properties.
