Details
Speaker: Marc A. Hillmyer, PhD
Principal Investigator, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair, University of Minnesota Director, Center for Sustainable Polymers Editor-in-Chief, Macromolecules
Talk title: Telechelic polymers for sustainable polyolefins
Abstract:
Polyolefins are ubiquitous. They are lightweight, strong, and stable. These features render them useful in countless applications. Unfortunately, these attributes also contribute to the accumulation of persistent plastic waste in the environment. While polyolefins can be mechanically recycled, often this results in an inferior product and is in part the reason that only a small percentage of polyolefin products are effectively recycled. We have embarked on an effort to prepare polyolefins with functional groups at their chain ends. These telechelic polyolefins can be stitched together to form high molar mass plastics and thermosets. By virtue of the synthetic pathway used to make these materials, we generate products that include weak links along the backbones of the polymer chains. These links can be chemically cleaved to quantitatively deconstruct the material and allow for efficient chemical recycling back to the starting telechelic polymers that can be subsequently repolymerized. Our approach takes advantage of a tandem catalysis strategy that is perfectly atom economic and readily scalable. In this lecture I will discuss the preparation of the telechelic polyolefins and their use in the preparation of degradable polyolefin-based plastics and thermosets. I will also report on their materials properties, scalability, and recyclability.
Bio:
Marc Hillmyer received his Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Florida in 1989 and his Doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1994. After completing a postdoctoral research position in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, he joined the Chemistry faculty at Minnesota in 1997. He is currently the McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Chemistry and leads a research group focused on the synthesis and self-assembly of functional and sustainable polymers. In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities, he is currently the editor-in-chief of Macromolecules and the director of the Center for Sustainable Polymers at the University of Minnesota.