Ying Yang
University of Nevada-Reno, NV·Chemistry·Early-career
Most everyday plastics are hard to recycle and do not break down. Synthetic polymers are also much simpler than biological materials, which can change their stiffness and shape in response to force.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
polymer chemistry
recyclable polymers
chemically recyclable plastics
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Vary the backbone and side-group structures of polydithioacetals and measure how these changes shift the monomer–polymer equilibrium, the balance that determines how easily the plastic polymerizes and depolymerizes.
- Develop polydithioacetal thermosets that can be reshaped through acid-catalyzed dithioacetal exchange and broken down on demand by light or mechanical force.
- Synthesize solvent-free linear–bottlebrush–linear triblock copolymers with force-tunable metal–ligand bonds that reversibly stiffen and then soften under strain, mimicking the mechanics of the cell protein actin.
- Use mechanical and spectroscopic measurements to determine how each structural component, and their interactions, controls the material's nonlinear viscoelastic (stretch-and-flow) behavior across force ranges.
More about the research
Research on these polymers asks two questions. First, can sulfur-containing plastics be designed so they can be reshaped and then broken back down into their starting molecules on demand? Second, can rubbery materials be built that reversibly stiffen and soften under strain, the way living cells do? Both lines of work use dynamic chemical bonds, which can break and re-form, to control polymer behavior.
Why it matters
Plastics that can be reprocessed when heated and broken back down into their ring-shaped starting molecules on demand could offer an alternative to non-degradable vinyl plastics and support a circular economy for plastics. Materials that reversibly stiffen and soften could resist both small and large impacts. Learning to control their nonlinear mechanics could eventually lead to materials that sense, signal, and change shape in response to force.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
CAREER: Mechano-Adaptive Polymers with Reversible Strain Stiffening and Softening via Active Control of Metal-Ligand Interactions
NSF · Aug 2023 – Jul 2028
CAS: Dithioacetal as a Highly Tunable and Versatile Bond for the Design of Chemically Recyclable and Dynamic Covalent Polymers
NSF · Aug 2023 – Jul 2027
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.
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.
Yoan Simon
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Materials Science·Early-career
Evaluate how the structure of amphiphilic triblock copolymers — stiffness, side-chain length, and interdigitation between opposing chains — governs their behavior in polymer membranes.
The school
University of Nevada-Reno: 11 labs on PI Pages, $194M a year on research, 186 research doctorates a year.
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