Catalyst RE-Design: Dynamic, Reactive, and Selective Systems for Oxygenated Polymer Synthesis

Polymer waste has quickly become one of our society\'s largest looming environmental concerns, where an estimated 4.9 GTons of polymer waste currently exist in the environment. Central to addressing this challenge is the generation of polymers with robust materials properties that embed or encode end-of-use. Oxygenated (co)polymers such as polyhydroxyalkanoates are naturally occurring and fully bioresorbable polymers with promising materials properties, yet their efficient and cost-effective stereospecific synthesis remains challenging. In this talk, I will share some of our group\'s recent advances in catalyst development for the synthesis of oxygenated (co)polymers. Specifically, we\'ll discuss how new catalyst design strategies which fully leverage the high metal-ligand lability of the rare-earth elements can lead to systems which are highly dynamic, reactive, and selective.

Jerome Robinson (Brown)