Polymer Chemistry Blog

Andy Cooper obtained his Ph.D at the University of Nottingham in 1994 for the study of organometallic reaction mechanisms. He then held an 1851 Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, working on polymerization reactions and phase transfer processes in supercritical fluids (1995–1997). He next held a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellowship at the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis in Cambridge, working on heterogeneous polymerizations in supercritical CO₂ (1997–1999). He joined the University of Liverpool in January 1999 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, where he now holds a personal chair. He is the founding Director of the Centre for Materials Discovery (established in 2007) and was a cofounder of a spin-out company, IOTA NanoSolutions, in 2005. He was Head of Chemistry and then Head of the School of Physical Sciences in the period 2007–2011. In addition to research in polymer chemistry, he has interests in crystal engineering, colloid science, and chemical problems related to energy.

Please follow the link for further information on Andy’s research group and his recent paper published in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

The constant albeit small chance of discovering something really remarkable and important, this is what makes research so exciting.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper?

We published our first paper on conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) in 2007 (Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2007, 46, 8574). There have been several nice follow-up studies since, but the most interesting have exploited the combination of extended conjugation and porosity in these materials. For example, one of the best papers in this area was published last year by Prof. Donglin Jiang (Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2011, 50, 8753) describing supercapacitive CMPs that rival nanocarbons. For these applications it will be important to control both porosity and also physical properties related to conjugation, such as optical band gap or charge mobility.  In this new study, we set out to synthesize triazine analogues of our first CMP materials. We found that the materials, while amorphous, were ‘isoreticular’ in the sense that changing from benzene to triazine nodes does not affect the microporosity.  The triazine CMPs, however, showed slightly higher CO₂ uptakes and optical band gaps that can be varied by copolymerization.   Variation of band gap could be useful in applications like photocatalysis.  Prof. Wenbin Lin at UNC has shown that related materials are good photocatalysts.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

I’ve found that the RSC journals have fast publication times and good editing and refereeing.  I’m sure Polymer Chemistry will not be an exception.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

2012 ACS meetings (both Spring and Fall), Pott Shrigley, and of course Warwick 2012.

How do you spend your spare times?

I haven’t had time for ‘hobbies’ as such for years, but I did recently take up mountain biking.  Perhaps this signifies a mid-life crisis…

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

A stunt man.  You get to live in a trailer.

Sabine Beuermann studied chemistry and received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in the group of Michael Buback at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen. After working as a visiting scientist at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington/DE, she returned to Göttingen to work on her habilitation, which was finalized with the habilitation thesis on homogeneous phase polymerizations in supercritical carbon dioxide and the venia legendi for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry. Since 2006 she is professor of Polymer Chemistry at the University of Potsdam. Current research interest include synthesis, characterization, and modification of vinylidene fluoride polymers, polymerizations in supercritical carbon dioxide or ionic liquids, reversible deactivated radical polymerizations, functionalization of nanoparticles or fullerenes with fluorinated polymers, and detailed investigations into the kinetics of radical polymerizations. Since 1996 she is a member of the IUPAC Subcommittee on “Modeling of Kinetics and Processes of Polymerization”.

Please follow the link for further information on Sabine’s laboratory and her recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00427A)

Initially, we started to look into vinylidene fluoride polymerizations, because I was interested in the kinetics and to use supercritical carbon dioxide as an environmentally friendly reaction medium. Since the very first PhD student working on this topic, M. Imran-ul-haq, had a background in organic chemistry he also started with the functionalization to an azide. Because of its ferro-, piezo, and pyroelectric properties there are many advanced applications for PVDF. Of particular interest are systems with separated PVDF domains, e.g. voids in PVDF or layer formation due to self-aggregation. From this point it was pretty obvious to think about the synthesis of block copolymers with PVDF. However, with the exception of iodine transfer polymerizations vinylidene fluoride is not well suited for reversible deactivated radical polymerization and thus, there were almost no reports on PVDF block copolymers. Obviously, using polystyrene as a second block was only the starting block. We are now working on block copolymers with a number of other polymers.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

Although being a young journal Polymer Chemistry is already well-recognized and the fraction of articles I am interested in is comparably large. Moreover, I like the design of the articles, and the “clean” structure of the homepage. After publication of the article I can also add that the whole process was very fast and went very smoothly.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

I am most excited on attending the 20th International Symposium on Fluorine Chemistry in Kobe in July, because it will be my first trip to Japan. In addition, I will go to the Freiburger Makromolekulares Kolloquium in February, the Polymer Reaction Engineering conference in May and probably to MACRO2012 in June.

How do you spend your spare times?

In my spare time I try to make as little plans in advance as possible. I enjoy walking in the beautiful parks and surroundings of Potsdam, trips to the North or Baltic Sea and visiting family.

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

Maybe a historian, but I am very happy with the choice I made.

Graeme Moad was born in Orange, NSW, Australia. He obtained his BSc (Hons, First Class) and PhD from the University of Adelaide in the field of organic free radical chemistry. After undertaking post-doctoral research at Pennsylvania State University in the field of biological organic chemistry he joined CSIRO in 1979 where he is is currently a chief research scientist.  He is also a project leader within the Cooperative Research Centre for Polymers. Dr Moad is author or co-author of over 150 publications, co-inventor of 34 patent families (12 relate to the RAFT process) and co-author of the book “The Chemistry of Radical Polymerization”. More than 12,500 papers cite his work and his h-index is 52. His research interests lie in the fields of polymer design and synthesis (radical polymerization, reactive extrusion, polymer nanocomposites) and polymerization kinetics and mechanism. Dr Moad is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and he has recently been elected as a titular member of the Polymer Division of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Please follow the link for further information on Graeme’s laboratory and his recent paper in Polymer Chemistry.

What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?

No specific inspiration. I sort of drifted into science and chemistry through a process of natural selection.

What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/c2py00529h)

The motivation for this particular line of research was provided by my colleague John Tsanaktsidis and post doc Shadi Houshyar who, having heard us talk on the precision of RAFT polymerization, had the perhaps naïve idea that the process might be used to construct polymer chains precisely.  While aware of their endeavour, I only became directly involved after they showed that it didn’t work.

Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?

The decision to send this paper to Polymer Chemistry was a direct consequence of the arrival of an invitation from Professors Christopher Barner-Kowollik, Jean-François Lutz, and Sebastien Perrier to contribute to the Themed Issue on New Methods of Polymer Synthesis planned for 2012. This fortuitously occurred at the time that we were contemplated publication of the work. Of course we were three months behind the deadline with our submission. The emerging reputation of Polymer Chemistry as one of the premier journals in the field was also important in our choice.

In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?

I will be at the upcoming 33^rd Australian Polymer Symposium, 12-15 February in Hobart, Tasmania.  Later in the year I will also present at IUPAC Macro 2012, June 24-29 in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA and at Warwick 2012, July 9-12 in Warwick, UK.

How do you spend your spare times?

Spare times?  Much is taken up by our two children. Another large portion by that chemistry that does not directly align with current work, writing papers… In what little remains: bushwalking, reading, maintaining a genealogical web site.

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

I suspect no matter what profession I chose I would still be a scientist. My mother thought I should go into banking. An aptitude test taken in final year of high school indicated I should be an architect (in a chemistry way, maybe I took that suggestion on board).  But having obtained a borderline marks in English, and grades in Maths, Chemistry and Physics sufficient to gain a University Scholarship (in the only year in which a good grade in English was not a prerequisite), my path was set.

I did rebuild a house once (in my spare time, pre-kids), that was enjoyable.