08/11/2021
By Matthew Gage

The Kennedy College of Science, Department of Chemistry, invites you to attend a proposal defense by Priyanka Biswas entitled “Towards Arm-First Star Polymer Synthesis using Photo-ATRP and Friedel Crafts Acylation of Activated Carbon Substrates.”

The defense will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021 at 1:30 p.m. via Zoom. Please contact Matthew Gage for meeting information if you are interested in attending. The committee will be composed of James Reuther (committee chair), Mingdi Yan, James Whitten and Marina Ruths. A brief abstract is provided below.

All interested students and faculty members are invited to attend.

Abstract: Photo-controlled Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (Photo-ATRP) mediated by UV light (λ = 365 nm) was utilized, for the first time, to synthesize star polymers by arm-first method. Star diblock copolymers were prepared by a two-step process starting with a one pot amphiphilic diblock copolymer synthesis containing poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate) (POEGA) blocks and poly(t-butyl acrylate) (PtBA) blocks. Star diblock copolymers were successfully prepared by using various rigid and flexible crosslinkers using CuIIBr2/ Tris[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]amine (Me6TREN) catalyst systems in trifluoroethanol (TFE) and CuIIBr2/tris(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)amine (TPMA) catalyst systems in water. Very high molecular weight with narrow dispersity star diblock copolymers of Mn= 214440 g mol-1 and Đ= 1.407, respectively, were obtained. After the deprotection of tert-butyl moieties, the star diblock copolymer will be utilized as nanoreactors in future for fabricating metal nanoparticle (MNP) gels and superlattices.