Brent Sumerlin
University of Florida, FL·Chemistry
Plastics face a trade-off: materials that can be recycled or reshaped are often not very stable, while tough, durable ones persist in the environment for a long time. This project aims to design polymers that stay strong and resist solvents and heat, yet can be repaired and reprocessed, so they last longer and create less waste.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
sustainable polymers
covalent adaptable networks
vitrimers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Develop pendant squarate esters as a new catalyst-free bond-exchange chemistry for vitrimers, reshapable crosslinked polymers that flow when heated.
- Determine how pendant squaramide groups, which stick together through non-covalent attractions, control the properties and responsive behavior of supramolecular polymer networks.
- Combine squaramide interactions with vinylogous urethane bond exchange to create materials that are both dynamic-covalent and supramolecular, and measure their enhanced properties.
- Create a new dynamic exchange approach built into polymers through step-growth polycondensation, and relate chain structure and topology to dynamic behavior.
More about the research
The approach centers on an underused chemical building block, squarate-based groups, and how its molecular details govern a polymer's life from synthesis to breakdown.
Why it matters
Plastic waste builds up because durable polymers are hard to recycle and recyclable ones are often too fragile. Polymers that are tough yet repairable and reprocessable could need replacing less often, reducing waste. This work could give materials designers new catalyst-free exchange chemistries and design rules for longer-lasting, recyclable plastics.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ying Yang
University of Nevada-Reno, NV·Chemistry·Early-career
Work out how initiators and catalysts control the ring-opening polymerization of dithioacetal macrocycles (sulfur-containing ring molecules), with the goal of achieving controlled "living" cationic polymerization.
Virgil Percec
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Chemistry
Explain the principles by which polymers and supramolecular assemblies self-organize into Frank-Kasper phases, complex packing structures known from metals and viruses, along with their orientational memory.
Chenfeng Ke
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Chemistry
Construct HCOFs from rigid macrocycles and organic cages with built-in recognition sites to selectively bind molecules of similar size and control solid-state assembly.
The school
University of Florida: 65 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 795 research doctorates a year.
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