Advancing Polymer Science with Organic Catalysts

ACS Webinars

Organic catalysts have exciting potential for both constructing and deconstructing plastics. They could offer significant advantages as greener alternatives to metal-based catalysts. Emerging synthetic methods have led to new classes of functional and programmably degradable materials useful in gene delivery.

Join Professor of Sustainable Polymer Chemistry, Andrew Dove of the University of Birmingham in the UK and the Robert Eckles Swain Professor in Chemistry, Robert Waymouth of Stanford University as they discuss recent advances with organic catalysts as more efficient adaptable tools in polymerization processes. Learn about the use of organic catalysts in traditional step growth polymerizations, more contemporary click step growth polymerizations, and how new processes have enabled for the efficient living polymerization of lactone and carbonate monomers where these organic catalysts have been integrated. Discover the purpose of organic catalysts in the depolymerization of plastics for the treatment of plastic waste, as well as examples of how new catalyst designs continue to foster innovation in polymer science.

This ACS Webinar is moderated by Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, Rachel Letteri of the University of Virginia, and co-produced with the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry.

What You Will Learn

  • Application of organic catalysts for stereocontrolled step growth polymerization
  • Development of high temperature organic catalysts for polymerization and depolymerization
  • Using organic catalysts to selectively depolymerize plastic mixtures
  • New designs for ultrafast organocatalytic polymerization reactions
  • Synergies between continuous flow chemistry and rapid organocatalytic polymerization reactions
  • New catalysts enabling the design of emerging functional materials for gene delivery
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Experts

Robert Waymouth
Robert Eckles Swain Professor in Chemistry,
Stanford University

Andrew Dove
Professor, Sustainable Polymer Chemistry,
University of Birmingham, UK

Rachel Letteri
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering,
University of Virginia

Co-Produced With

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