Polymer Chemistry Blog

Prof. Dr. Jean Francois Carpentier received his PhD in 1992 in organic and macromolecular chemistry, University of Lille. He has received several awards, including Pasteur Medal of the graduate school “Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Lille”, Bronze medal of CNRS (1997), Recipient of the ATIPE fellowship from CNRS (2001), Recipient of the Rennes Metropole researcher award (2003), Junior member of Institut Universitaire de France (2005), Chevalier in Ordre des Palmes Académiques (2013), Silver Medal CNRS and Germaine et André Lequeux award from the French Academy of Sciences/Institut de France (2014). His research interests include organometallic chemistry of oxophilic elements (groups 2-6, 12-14); design of single-site (stereoselective) polymerization catalysts: metallocenes, post-metallocenes, Ziegler-Natta polymerization and oligomerization catalysis: polyolefins, polydienes, polyesters, functional polymer materials; homogeneous catalysis for fine chemicals synthesis: hydrogenation, hydroelementation, carbonylation and green chemistry and biorenewables, and biodegradable polymer materials. He has co-authored 236 publications in peer-reviewed journals; 48 original patents and 9 book chapters. He has co-supervised over 20 PhD students.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

 I grew up in a family with a strong appeal for nature and I have been interested in “natural things” from my earliest childhood. When I was 13, at school, I had a wonderful teacher who explained to us the connections between geology, physics and chemistry. I then started to collect minerals and, rapidly, I became more and more interested in the chemistry of these “stones”, trying to understand what they were made of. At 15, I was regularly performing “chemical experiments”, dissolving minerals by acidic treatments and trying to identify which elements were present by wet analytical tests (to the great fear of my parents! but they always encouraged me). Although I was hesitating for a time to become a pharmacist, I finally decided to embark on chemistry studies.

 What was the motivation to write your Polymer Chemistry article?

 Some years ago, my close colleague, Dr. Sophie Guillaume, a specialist in the field of polycarbonates and polyesters, and I started to look at the topical, so-called NIPUs: Non-Isocyanate PolyUrethanes, through the ring-opening of dicyclocarbonate-telechelic polyesters, some materials we are used to preparing in our group. With a former postdoc associate, Dr. Ali Alaaeddine who was working with Dr. Bruno Ameduri in Montpellier, a specialist in fluorinated polymers, we decided to explore fluorinated versions of polyhydroxyurethanes. We anticipated that the combination of these quite different functionalities would make rather unique materials.

 Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work? (DOI: 10.1039/C4PY00547C)

Polymer Chemistry is a high-quality journal with a broad audience. The editorial and production teams are very well-organized and turn-around time for peer-reviewing and production is short.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

Most of my research is devoted to organometallic catalysis, largely for polymerization catalysis. I will thus attend next July the International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry in Sapporo and the 41th International Conference on Coordination Chemistry in Singapore. Next December, I will attend the 10th SPSJ International Polymer Conference in Tsukuba, Japan.

How do you spend your spare time?

I enjoy spending time with my two kids and my wife. In winter time, all my colleagues know that I go hunting regularly. Extensive walking through the countryside refreshes my mind, gives me time for thinking quietly, and helps me keep fit (admittedly with difficulty…). Besides, I still very much enjoy taking care of my mineral collection that I have not stopped since childhood, visiting museums and mines; chemistry is never far away…

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I would probably have become a forest guard or a fisherman.

Read Professor Carpentier’s latest Polymer Chemistry paper:

From glycidyl carbonate to hydroxyurethane side-groups in alternating fluorinated copolymers
Roukaya Hamiye, Ali Alaaeddine, Mouhamad Awada, Benjamin Campagne, Sylvain Caillol, Sophie M. Guillaume, Bruno Ameduri and Jean-François Carpentier  

Cyrille Boyer is a guest web-writer for Polymer Chemistry. He is currently an associate professor and an ARC-Future Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales (Australia) and deputy director of the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine.

Zhenkun Zhang obtained his B.S. and M.S. degree in Chemistry from Nankai University in China in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2007 from University of Twente in the Netherlands by working in Prof. Jan. K. Dhont’s group in Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. After that, he spent one year in postdoctoral training at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal of the CNRS in France with Dr. Eric Grelet. From Sept. 2008 to Mar. 2011, he conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Jan Vermant and Prof. Dr. Christian Clasen at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. In June of 2011, he joined the Institute of Polymer Chemistry (IPC) at Nankai University and then was promoted to associate professor in the same year. In his previous research, he mainly focused on applying chemical modifications to rodlike viruses to create well-defined models for the fundamental research of soft matter such as chiral nematic liquid crystals, hydrogels, etc. Together with his collaborators, he also made some progress in the preparation of polymeric ellipsoidal colloids and succeeded in the large-scale directed self-assembly of such particles at a fluid-fluid interface. His current research interests are the preparation and controlled assembly of virus/polymer hybrids, understanding and application of the chiral nematic liquid crystal phase of rodlike viruses, self-assembly of anisotropic particles at fluid-fluid interfaces.

Group web-link: http://polymer.nankai.edu.cn/zhang/

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

It is a destiny. I was indeed good in most of the subjects I had to learn at school, except for sports. When I was at the junior school we started to learn chemistry. I could get a very high score in each examination and then was promoted to the assistant to the chemistry teacher to help him with collecting the homework and examination papers. At that time, I was surprised by the fact that gas bubbles appeared when I poured on vinegar to remove water scale, and I tried to plug two iron sticks to a potato with the hope of producing some electricity to power a tiny bulb. I continued to make high scores in each chemistry test and worked as the assistant to the chemistry teacher through my days in high school. When it was time to pick a major for my university study, I put chemistry as the top choice and went to the college of chemistry at Nankai University in China, which was then claimed to have the best chemistry in China. Since then, I have never stayed away from chemistry.

What was the motivation to write your Polymer Chemistry article? (DOI: 10.1039/C4PY00508B)

Hydrogels are normally made from polymer. In other words, polymers are the key backbone of most of hydrogels. Nowadays, there is increasing interest in the hydogels made from nanoscale fibrous particles which are the results of supramolecular self-assembly of some small molecules. This kind of hydrogel is less controllable and tunable in terms of their mechanical, rheological properties and structure. I have been working with a rodlike virus which has a slender shape with a diameter only 6.6 nm and a length of 880nm. One day, I got the idea that this virus should be the ideal backbone for a fibrous hydrogel. In addition, since I started my own group, I learned from my fellow colleagues about the intriguing properties of boronic acid containing polymers which have found many potential applications such as in glucose sensing materials for the benefit of diabetes treatment. To my surprise, there are barely any reports about binding the boronic acid containing polymers to some biological substrates like proteins to create interesting materials. We decided to design a boronic acid containing polymer with an end functional group which can bind to my favorite natural protein assembly- the rod-like virus. In this way, we created the multiple responsive virus based hydrogel.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

During the work leading to the results presented in the current manuscript, we have read several papers from Polymer Chemistry about boronic acid containing polymers. The quality of the papers is very high and impressive. We also learned that this journal has a fast review and publication process. Our manuscript has been subjected to the assessment of three referees, who gave very objective, insightful and detailed comments. Communication with the Editors is also very pleasant.

At which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

I plan to attend the 4th Zing Polymer Chemistry Conference in Cancun, Mexico on 10th December 2014 – 13th December 2014.

How do you spend your spare time?

I like playing with my kid, reading and running when I have free time.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

Once, for a while, I was obsessed with internet technology, especially website designing and programming. If I were not working in academia, I would have been a programmer.

Read Zhenkun Zhang’s lastest Polymer Chemistry article here:

Cyrille Boyer is a guest web-writer for Polymer Chemistry. He is currently an associate professor and an ARC-Future Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales (Australia) and deputy director of the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine.