Chemistry Announcements, Chemistry Colloquium

"Structurally dynamic polymers: From optically-healable materials to mechanically-adaptive films."

Presented by Stuart Rowan, Case Western Reserve University

The use of reversible (dynamic) chemistry allows access macroscopically adaptive, stimuli-responsive materials.1 As such the designed utilization of supramolecular chemistry or dynamic covalent chemistry in the field of polymer science has seen a dramatic growth in the last decade or so. We have been interested in the potential of such structurally dynamic systems to access new material platforms. We have developed a range of new mechanically stable polymer films that change their properties in response to a given stimulus, such as temperature, light or specific chemicals, where the response is governed by dynamic chemistry incorporated into the polymeric architecture. Such dynamic materials have been targeted toward applications that include new implantable adaptive nanocomposites2 (Fig 1a), healable plastics3,4, sensors for chemical warfare agents5 (Fig 1b), shape memory materials6 and thermally and mechanically responsive hydrogels.7 Our latest results in this area will be discussed.

Selected References
1. Wojtecki, R.J.; Meador, M.A.; Rowan S.J. Utilizing the Dynamic Bond to Access Macroscopically-Responsive Structurally-Dynamic Polymers Nature Materials 2011, 10, 14-27.
2. Capadona, J.R.; Shanmuganathan, K.; Tyler D.J.; Rowan S.J.; Weder, C. Stimuli-Responsive Polymer Nanocomposites Inspired by the Sea Cucumber Dermis Science 2008, 319, 1370-1374.
3. Fox, J.; Wie, J.J.; Greenland, B.W.; Burattini, S.; Hayes, W.; Colquhoun, H.M.; Mackay, M.E.; Rowan S.J. High-Strength, Healable, Supramolecular Polymer Nanocomposites J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 5362-5368.
4. Burnworth, M.; Tang, L.; Kumpfer, J.R., Duncan, A. J., Beyer, F.L.; Fiore, G.L.; Rowan S.J.; Weder, C. Optically Healable Supramolecular Polymers Nature 2011, 472, 334-337.
5. Kumpfer, J.; Jin, J.; Rowan, S.J. Stimuli-responsive europium-containing metallo-supramolecular polymers J. Mater. Chem. 2010, 20, 145-151.
6. Kumpfer, J.R.; Rowan, S.J. Thermo-, Photo- and Chemo-Responsive Shape-Memory Properties from Photo-Crosslinked Metallo-Supramolecular Polymers J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 12866-12874.
7. Buerkle, L.E.; von Recum, H.A.; Rowan S.J. Toward Potential New Supramolecular Tissue Engineering Scaffolds Based on Guanosine Derivatives Chem. Sci. 2012, 3, 564-572.

Hosted by Luis Campos

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Meet the Speaker at 1:30pm in room 328 Havemeyer
Tea & Cookies at 4:00pm in room 328 Havemeyer
Seminar at 4:30 in room 209 Havemeyer

STUART J. ROWAN is currently the Kent Hale Professor of Engineering in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. He also has secondary appointments in both Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry.

Prof. Rowan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1969 but grew up in Troon, Ayrshire on the west coast of Scotland. He received his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry in 1991 from the University of Glasgow and stayed there for his Ph.D. where he worked on Supramolecular Crystal Engineering of Inclusion Compounds, receiving his Ph.D. in 1995. In 1994 he moved to the Chemistry Department at the University of Cambridge and carried out research on the development of Dynamic Combinatorial Libraries in the labs of Prof Jeremy Sanders, FRS. In 1996 he was appointed a Research Associate of Girton College, Cambridge. In 1998 he moved across the Atlantic (and the continental U.S.) to continue his postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Los Angeles with Sir Fraser Stoddart FRS. While in Southern California he developed numerous new methods for the construction of interlocked molecular species. In 1999 he was appointed as an Assistant Professor to the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2005 before becoming Full Professor in 2008. In 2009 he became the Kent H. Smith Professor of Engineering. His research interests focus on the potential of dynamic chemistry (covalent and non-covalent) in the construction and properties of polymeric materials. His group works on supramolecular polymers, stimuli-responsive polymer including self-healing materials, metal-containing polymers, gels, biomaterials, surface assembly and developing new synthetic methods for the construction of complex polymeric architectures.

He is the Deputy Editor of ACS Macro Letters, Director of the Institute for Advanced Materials at CWRU, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is an NSF-CAREER awardee and has published over 110 scientific papers, book chapters and reviews.