Metal-Centered Star-Shaped Polymers and Block Copolymers

该奖项是化学分部有机动力学项目的研究计划拨款。有了这些资金，弗吉尼亚大学的卡桑德拉·弗雷泽教授将研究以金属为中心的星形聚合物和嵌段共聚物。金属配合物将作为聚合物的中心核心，聚合物臂将使用活性聚合技术生成。金属配合物的变化将允许多种可能的三维分子结构，所有未知，具有很大的灵活性，在性质和领域结构。这项工作将探索制备这类材料的方法，并将基于标准光谱技术和多角度激光散射制定表征方案。材料性能的系统和可预测的变化为优化其行为提供了主要策略。这项工作将探索一系列新的聚合物材料，这些材料有望表现出不同寻常的性能，从长远来看，可能会导致人工酶和对热、光和电敏感的材料。

This award is a Research Planning Grant in the Organic Dynamics Program of the Chemistry Division. With these funds, Professor Cassandra Fraser of the University of Virginia will study metal-centered star-shaped polymers and block copolymers. Metal complexes will serve as the central cores of the polymers and the polymer arms will be generated using living polymerization techniques. Variation of the metal complex will allow for a wide variety of possible three dimensional molecular structures, all unknown, with much flexibility in the properties and in the domain structure. The work will explore the methodology for preparation of such a class of materials and will develop characterization protocols based on standard spectroscopic techniques and on multi-angle laser light scattering. Systematic and predictable variation of the properties of materials offers a prime strategy for optimization of their behavior. This work will explore a new series of polymeric materials which are expected to exhibit unusual properties and, in the long run, to lead to potential artificial enzymes and to materials sensitive to heat, light, and electricity.