Polymer Chemistry Blog

Nick Warren is an Associate Professor at School of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds. He was awarded an Masters in Chemistry from the University of Bristol in 2005 following which he conducted two years industrial research. He then moved to the University of Sheffield where he obtained a PhD in Polymer Chemistry. He continued as a postdoctoral researcher in Sheffield working in the area of polymerisation-induced self-assembly (PISA) until 2016, when he moved to Leeds to start his independent research career. His research group aims to design a new generation of sustainable and functional polymer materials by exploiting the latest advances in both polymer chemistry and self-optimising reactor technologies equipped with advanced online monitoring and computer control. He can be found on Twitter @njwarren1.

Read Nick’s Emerging Investigator article ‘Autonomous polymer synthesis delivered by multi-objective closed-loop optimisation’.

How do you feel about Polymer Chemistry as a place to publish research on this topic?

The vision of our research group is to develop technologies which aim to enhance precision and reproducibility in polymer synthesis and it is therefore vital that we target polymer chemists directly. Polymer Chemistry is the ideal avenue for this, and we hope it encourages adoption of new technologies in polymer synthesis labs around the world. Hopefully over the next few years, we can work with others to discover new materials with our platforms by implementing them for more technically demanding polymerisation processes.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

The ability to control our systems remotely, means we anticipate that networks of reactors in different labs around the world can communicate via cloud computing to optimise and discover new polymers. We are really excited by the fact that this is bringing artificially intelligent approaches to polymer discovery one step closer!

There are many advantages that flow chemistry affords here, but the challenges associated with polymer solutions in flow means a lot of work is required to optimise the reactor geometries and to provide consistent mixing. However, by working with fluid dynamics experts we are beginning to address these problems, which have traditionally been a major barrier. We are also keen to enable multi-step processes, without human intervention with each characterised in real-time. This includes post-polymerisation processing, and purification. There are also significant challenges in dealing with all sorts of data, which means we’re going to need to tailor our machine learning algorithms to accept this – essentially teaching robots how to do polymer synthesis!

Professor Runhui Liu obtained Ph.D in organic chemistry 2009 at Purdue University. Afterward, he took postdoctoral trainings at California Institute of Technology and University of Wisconsin-Madison during 2010-2014. At the end of 2014, he took a professor position in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST). His current research focuses on peptide polymer-based biomaterials for antimicrobial and tissue engineering applications.

Read Runhui’s article ‘Facile Synthesis of Polypeptoid Bearing Bulky Sidechains via Urea Accelerated Ring-Opening Polymerization of a-Amino Acid N-Substituted N-Carboxyanhydrides’.

How do you feel about Polymer Chemistry as a place to publish research on this topic?

Polymer Chemistry is a wonderful place to publish our work on polymer synthesis.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am most excited in exploring new chemistry for polymer synthesis, especially to tackle the long-lasting challenges.

The most challenging things for me as a professor are in two folds: keeping the lab running efficiently and productively with minimum amount of funding; inspiring/encouraging students to work on long-standing challenges but not hot topics, and persuading students to give up results that look interesting and publishable at first glance.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

As long as the start-up funding can support the lab for the first 3-4 years, focus on science is more productive eventually; as long as the PI and students can survive, no rush to publish or publish a lot at the first 3 years.

Matthias Hartlieb received his PhD in Chemistry in 2015 at the Friedrich Schiller-University in Jena. He proceeded to work as a DFG-funded postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick followed by a research position at the Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht. He joined the University of Potsdam in 2019 as an Open-Topic Postdoc and, since 2021, he leads an Emmy Noether research group at Potsdam. His research interests are the design of functional polymeric (bio)materials, specifically in the areas of antimicrobial polymers and supramolecular polymers, using tools such as (photo)-RAFT polymerization or solid phase synthesis. More information can be found on his group website and on Twitter @PolyBioPotsdam.

Read Matthias’ article ‘The role of reversible deactivation in photo-iniferter RAFT polymerization: high livingness enables the straightforward synthesis of multiblock copolymers’.

How do you feel about Polymer Chemistry as a place to publish research on this topic?

A significant share of my publications are in Polymer Chemistry and there are reasons for that. Of course, it is one of the leading journals in macromolecular chemistry, and in my opinion, it presents the broadest overview in this area. So, it’s a great journal for researchers to see and be seen. I am also in favor of the uncomplicated and open reviewing process. Waiting times are relatively short and usually feedback is extremely constructive. It might also be a result of my time in the UK, but for me Polymer Chemistry is the journal where I feel most “at home” with my research.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

There are actually at least two aspects I am currently equally excited about. On the one hand there is photo-iniferter RAFT polymerization, which is also the topic of the publication in the special issue. This method has a tremendous potential, both for polymer synthesis as well as for material design. On the other hand, I am very keen on developing new antimicrobial polymers. At some point in the future antibiotics might fail us and then we need to have something to replace them to avoid a drastic decrease in health care quality and life expectancy.

We are looking at the impact of polymer architecture and on the membrane interaction of these polymers, among other things in order to get closer to an application. For the development of new antimicrobial polymers, we are currently implementing PI-RAFT as well.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

When it comes to antimicrobial polymers, the most important question is how we can improve their properties to bring them closer to an actual clinical application. However, this contains a lot of other questions, as there are many parameters, influencing the bioactivity of these polymers. Overall, their selectivity (targeting bacterial cells over mammalian cells) requires improvement but its not entirely clear how to achieve optimal performance.

We are looking into the polymer architecture, a parameter that hasn’t received much attention. We are also probing different targeting strategies and want to understand the mechanism of membrane interaction of these polymers in more detail.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

I am happy to forward something that has helped me staying on track: a fellow early career researcher did show me his folder with failed grant applications from the last few years, which had well over 30 items in it. However, he also had one successful one, and that was enough to kick start his career. The same thing happened to me. A lot of failed grant applications, not always with helpful feedback, sometimes without any feedback at all. It is easy to get frustrated at this stage but its important to continue trying. For me eventually, the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) thought my ideas regarding antimicrobial polymers were worth funding, which was the start of my independent research group. The lesson seems to be: don’t get discouraged by failure, because there will be a lot of that. Have a plan B but stay on track and try everything you can to follow your goal. Persistence is key (among other things like good mentoring, a supportive family, etc.).

Dr. Wen-Ming Wan is a Professor at Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his B.E. degree in Polymer Material and Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology. He received a Ph.D. degree in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from University of Science and Technology of China, where he developed polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) method under the supervision of Prof. Cai-Yuan Pan. He completed postdocs at UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas) with Prof. Wen-Hong Li, The University of Southern Mississippi with Prof. Charles L. McCormick, and Rutgers University (Newark) with Prof. Frieder Jäkle. He started his independent research career as an Assistant Professor at Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology at China University of Petroleum (East China) in 2014, and then moved to Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2018. His current research interests focus on the development of novel polymerization methodologies, including but not limited to Barbier polymerization, living polymerization, polymerization-induced emission (PIE), single-atom polymerization (SAP) and PISA.

Read Wen-Ming’s article ‘Room-temperature Barbier single-atom polymerization induced emission as a versatile approach for the utilization of monofunctional carboxylic acid resources’.

How do you feel about Polymer Chemistry as a place to publish research on this topic?

Polymer chemistry is of significance in polymer science. So, Polymer Chemistry journal is a significant platform to publish important research work in polymer science, including synthesis, functionality and applications of polymers.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

Carbonyl chemistry is fundamental and plays cornerstone roles in synthetic chemistry. Meanwhile, carbonyl compounds are widely and readily available from fossil fuels and biomass, which are important resources on Earth. However, corresponding carbonyl polymerization is rarely investigated. My most excited work at the moment is Barbier polymerization, which successfully realizes the utilization of a varieties of carbonyls as polymerizable groups for the molecular design of nonconjugated luminescent polymers through polymerization-induced emission (PIE) strategy. Currently, the most challenging about my research is to demonstrate the advantages and importance of carbonyl polymerization in both scientific and industrial aspects, which will ultimately allow us to exploit Earth’s carbonyl resources more efficiently and functionally.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Since Staudinger proposed the concept of polymerization in 1920, generations of polymer chemists have spent considerable efforts to develop different kinds of polymerization methods, resulting in prosperous polymer science with abundant synthetic polymer materials in the forms of plastics, fibers, rubbers, etc. In comparison with previous polymerization methods, whether can Barbier polymerization survive throughout the history of polymer chemistry? How far can Barbier polymerization go? Whether can the prepared polymers via Barbier polymerization be recyclable? Whether is the concept of PIE applicable to other polymerization methods?