This award will support Dr. Mark M. Green of the Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, New York, to collaborate with Professor Koichi Hatada and Yoshio Okamoto of the Department of Chemistry, Osaka University, for six months beginning in September, 1989. They will work on the synthesis of copolymers of specific composition and microstructure from isocyanates and from methacrylates to test the idea that secondary conformational information can be transmitted across a diblock boundary in the growth process. Controlled anionic polymerization will be used for the copolymer synthesis, and chiral optical techniques will be used to characterize the resulting structure. This cooperative project will provide Dr. Pearse access to the anionic techniques used to produce conformationally chiral and optically active molecules which have been developed by the Japanese col- laborators. This research will also complement that currently supported by the National Science Foundation's Materials-Chemistry Initiative, and may have important implications in the development of synthesis techniques for commercially important polymers.
