Oct, 2019
Jessica reported a second class of cyclopropenes that exhibit single addition reactivity in Angew. Simple change of Me to Ph substituent completely changes the reactivity.
A nice preview from Hawker and coworkers "the Allure of Sequence Control" about our work on sequence control via single monomer addition. Also former student Ben Elling wrote about his trajectory on the potential energy surface of grad school and beyond.
Jessica reported a second class of cyclopropenes that exhibit single addition reactivity in Angew. Simple change of Me to Ph substituent completely changes the reactivity.
A nice preview from Hawker and coworkers "the Allure of Sequence Control" about our work on sequence control via single monomer addition. Also former student Ben Elling wrote about his trajectory on the potential energy surface of grad school and beyond.
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Aug, 2019
Congratulations to Ben and Jessica! They finally cracked the secret code of cyclopropenes (it was once so mysterious!) and achieved controlled single addition of cyclopropenes at any desired locations along a living ROMP polymer - See the story in Chem and highlight by C&EN. Let us know if you would like to try these cyclopropenes for your research! 4th PhD minted! Congratulations to Dr. Zexin Jin on his heroic efforts to develop the synthetic methodology, design aesthetically pleasing molecules, and understand the effects of CBD antiaromaticity! He is the only student in our group who doesn't work with polymers and established our project on CBD-containing polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons from scratch. We will miss you Dr. "Gin" -- wish you all the best for postdoc in the Nuckolls group! Holden figured out the tricks to make very high MW (>300 KDa) CANAL ladder polymers, which formed nice membranes for gas separation, and discovered changing simple substituents can significantly increase permeability without compromising selectivity. The collaborative work with the Smith lab (MIT) was published in Macromolecules. |
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July, 2019
We are enjoying a busy and fun summer with undergrads, Soyoung, Karis, Jonathan, Zixuan, high school RISE intern, Leslie, and 0-yr grad student, Ashley. Fantastic to see this unusual gender unbalance! |
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May, 2019
3rd PhD minted! Congratulations to Dr. Junzhe Lou, our group's polymer guru and 1st PhD in MSE! He's been a lone star and trailblazer in dynamic polymer networks and polyelectrolytes in our group, setting a role model on how to be exploratory, creative, meticulous, and truly interdisciplinary. Junzhe also managed to win the People's Choice Award in the SPC poster symposium before heading to Harvard! |
Apr, 2019
Benzoladderenes: Congrats to Jinghui and Matias on a new family of polymechanophores that transform from nonconjugated to conjugated polymers in response to force, reporting in JACS! Jinghui was also awarded the prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship!!
Benzoladderenes: Congrats to Jinghui and Matias on a new family of polymechanophores that transform from nonconjugated to conjugated polymers in response to force, reporting in JACS! Jinghui was also awarded the prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship!!
Mar, 2019
Two prestigious awards won by students!
Congratulations to Zexin for the Department William Johnson Award, which is awarded to one student per year to recognize outstanding academic and research achievements!
Congratulations to Matias for the NDSEG fellowship!
The group celebrated their awards with a tuxedo cake and an award dinner.
Two prestigious awards won by students!
Congratulations to Zexin for the Department William Johnson Award, which is awarded to one student per year to recognize outstanding academic and research achievements!
Congratulations to Matias for the NDSEG fellowship!
The group celebrated their awards with a tuxedo cake and an award dinner.
Feb, 2019
Thanks to the hard work from the past and present group members, Yan was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship!
Congrats to Junzhe and Sean on using well-defined polyelectrolytes and rigorously measured phase diagrams to unambiguously reveal the effect of local polarity on coacervation, which was quantitatively captured by a simple model developed by the Qin group (Stanford), published in ACS Cent. Sci.
Congrats to Holden and Mahmoud on reporting CANAL ladder polyimides for membrane gas separation in Chem. Mater.! - our first paper on membrane gas separation in collaboration with the Pinnau group (KAUST).
We look forward to more exciting work from the fruitful collaborations!
Thanks to the hard work from the past and present group members, Yan was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship!
Congrats to Junzhe and Sean on using well-defined polyelectrolytes and rigorously measured phase diagrams to unambiguously reveal the effect of local polarity on coacervation, which was quantitatively captured by a simple model developed by the Qin group (Stanford), published in ACS Cent. Sci.
Congrats to Holden and Mahmoud on reporting CANAL ladder polyimides for membrane gas separation in Chem. Mater.! - our first paper on membrane gas separation in collaboration with the Pinnau group (KAUST).
We look forward to more exciting work from the fruitful collaborations!
Jan, 2019
Warm welcome to first year grad students Kayla Barker (Fang, TAMU) and Matias Horst (Franz, Duke) to officially join the group and Prof. Yu Zhao (NUS) for his sabbatical!
Warm welcome to first year grad students Kayla Barker (Fang, TAMU) and Matias Horst (Franz, Duke) to officially join the group and Prof. Yu Zhao (NUS) for his sabbatical!
Dec, 2018
Congratulations to Yewchin on reporting a new method of synthesizing macromonomers and narrow-disperse brush block copolymers in Macromolecules and Zexin on reporting acene-like molecules containing strong antiaromaticiy with tunable electronics and packing in Angew Chem!
Congratulations to Yewchin on reporting a new method of synthesizing macromonomers and narrow-disperse brush block copolymers in Macromolecules and Zexin on reporting acene-like molecules containing strong antiaromaticiy with tunable electronics and packing in Angew Chem!
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Oct, 2018
Second PhD minted! Congratulations to Dr. Yewchin Teo, who has done it all, from brush and ladder polymers to conjugated materials! We miss you and wish you all the best for your career back in Singapore! |
Sept, 2018
Warm welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Joe Ahn from the Fu and Peters groups at Caltech!
Congratulations to Jessica on the synthesis and mechanoactivation of the first mechanically responsive block copolymers in JACS and Zexin on a new member of [3]naphthylene in Syn Lett as part of the cluster of Synthesis of Materials!
Warm welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Joe Ahn from the Fu and Peters groups at Caltech!
Congratulations to Jessica on the synthesis and mechanoactivation of the first mechanically responsive block copolymers in JACS and Zexin on a new member of [3]naphthylene in Syn Lett as part of the cluster of Synthesis of Materials!
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Aug, 2018
First PhD minted! Bittersweet to see a founding member and cyclopropene guru leave. All the best to Dr. Ben Elling for his postdoc with Prof. Dichtel at Northwestern! |
May, 2018
Interested in clean and quantitative end-functionalization of living ROMP polymers? Check out Ben's method using single-addition cyclopropenes. Let us know if you would like to try cyclopropenes for your next ROMP end-functionalization.
Yewchin's CBD-fused electron-poor phenazines published in Org. Lett. -- variable degrees of antiaromaticity strongly affect band gaps and optical properties.
Interested in clean and quantitative end-functionalization of living ROMP polymers? Check out Ben's method using single-addition cyclopropenes. Let us know if you would like to try cyclopropenes for your next ROMP end-functionalization.
Yewchin's CBD-fused electron-poor phenazines published in Org. Lett. -- variable degrees of antiaromaticity strongly affect band gaps and optical properties.
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Apr, 2018
The group gave a strong mechanochemical farewell to Prof. Zhixing Chen. We wish you all the best starting your lab at Peking University! We also warmly welcomed visiting Professor Hiroaki Shimomoto from Ehime University! |
Mar, 2018
Junzhe's trick to temporally modulate the injectability and stability of dynamic hydrogels using a biocompatible catalyst published in Adv. Mater.
Junzhe's trick to temporally modulate the injectability and stability of dynamic hydrogels using a biocompatible catalyst published in Adv. Mater.
Jan, 2018
The group welcomes new students JD (Caltech) and Jinghui (PKU)! Wish Jing all the best for her faculty position at Wuhan University!
The group welcomes new students JD (Caltech) and Jinghui (PKU)! Wish Jing all the best for her faculty position at Wuhan University!
Oct, 2017
Congratulations to Zexin and Yewchin for their JACS paper on [3]naphthylenes and tuning their antiaromaticity!
Congratulations to Zexin and Yewchin for their JACS paper on [3]naphthylenes and tuning their antiaromaticity!
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Sept, 2017
The group enjoyed end-of-summer and farewell party. Best wishes to our visiting scholars Takaaki and Francesco! Check out our review on how to build macromolecular ladders. |
Aug, 2017
Congratulations to Zhixing Chen and the Stanford team for the awesome work featured on the cover of Science!
Learn more about this polymer mechanochemical metamorphosisCommentary from S.L.Craig in Nat. Chem. and S.W.Thomas in Angew. Chem.
Highlights
"Sound switches material from insulator to semiconductor" Nature.com
"Ultrasonic vibrations force a polymer to be a semiconductor" Phys.org
"Polyladderenes unzip to form semiconducting polymers" C&EN
Congratulations to Zhixing Chen and the Stanford team for the awesome work featured on the cover of Science!
Learn more about this polymer mechanochemical metamorphosisCommentary from S.L.Craig in Nat. Chem. and S.W.Thomas in Angew. Chem.
Highlights
"Sound switches material from insulator to semiconductor" Nature.com
"Ultrasonic vibrations force a polymer to be a semiconductor" Phys.org
"Polyladderenes unzip to form semiconducting polymers" C&EN