Virgil Percec
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Chemistry
Metal crystals and biological molecules such as proteins and DNA are very different materials. Yet both have atoms arranged with extraordinary precision, and that precision gives them their remarkable properties.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
supramolecular polymers
polymer chemistry
self-assembly
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- 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.
- Test how general cogwheel double-helix, hat-shape and tobacco mosaic virus-like helical supramolecular polymerizations are. Deracemization during these polymerizations yields assemblies of single handedness.
- Determine the scope and limits of self-interrupted living polymerization for making monodisperse, biology-like polymers without step-by-step synthesis, and explore alternative routes to uniform polymers.
More about the research
Synthetic polymers, the long-chain molecules behind plastics and many technologies, lack this order. Their chains vary in length, chirality (left- or right-handedness), composition and sequence. As a result, they cannot match the properties of metals or natural macromolecules. This project asks whether biological design principles can raise synthetic polymers to the same level of structural precision.
Why it matters
This work is mainly fundamental. It seeks rules for building synthetic polymers as precise as proteins or metal crystals. Polymers with that level of control could eventually expand the uses of synthetic materials in health, defense and other technologies. The project also trains high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs across chemistry, physics, biology and nanoscience.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Brent Sumerlin
University of Florida, FL·Chemistry
Develop pendant squarate esters as a new catalyst-free bond-exchange chemistry for vitrimers, reshapable crosslinked polymers that flow when heated.
Jonathan Pokorski
University of California-San Diego, CA·Chemistry
Develop ways to grow polymer chains of norbornene and oxanorbornene directly from cell surfaces using ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), a catalyst-driven reaction that links ring-shaped building blocks into chains.
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 Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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