Polymers are highly useful modern materials for clothes, furniture, electronic devices, household products and appliances, food packages, and medicine. Polymer properties are controlled by the chemical structures of its building blocks. The preparation of polymers with new or improved properties requires the use of new blocking blocks, and the economical manufacturing of these polymers requires the development of efficient synthetic approaches to link the new building blocks together. In this project, Professor Robert Waymouth of Stanford University and Dr. James Hedrick of IBM Almaden Laboratories are developing a broad and versatile platform of methods to enable the synthesis of new building blocks and well-defined biodegradable polymers with novel structures, properties and function. This project provides a model academic / industrial collaboration between Stanford and IBM Almaden Laboratories under the auspices of NSF's GOALI program (Grant Opportunities for Academic Liason with Industry). It engages graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative effort. The unusual educational environment embraces both academic and industrial perspectives on the translation of basic science into technology.
This project funded by the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry program of the Chemistry Division focuses on the simultaneous development of new science and technologies. Specifically, this project aims to develop 1) new organocatalysts that are active and selective for ring-opening polymerization, 2) new strategies for the synthesis of new monomers (functionalized lactones and cyclic carbonates) that can be enchained to elicit novel properties and function for macromolecular materials, 3) a novel depolymerization reaction; and 4) new classes of "smart" water-soluble copolymers whose structures and properties can be modulated by changes in external environment. Central to the scientific approach is an emphasis on mechanistic and theoretical investigations to illuminate the mechanistic details of organocatalytic polymerization reactions, both to test evolving hypotheses on organocatalytic strategies and to provide clear scientific rationales for both the advantages and limitations of these synthetic strategies.
