Blaine McCarthy won 1st prize at the National Graduate Research Conference for her oral presentation on Novel Synthetic Strategies.
“Organocatalyzed Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization for the Synthesis of Precise Polymer Architectures”
Abstract: Controlled radical polymerizations (CRPs) have changed the paradigm of polymeric functional materials by providing the precise control needed to synthesize polymers with well-defined molecular weights. The most commonly used types of CRP, Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP), has been used to successfully synthesize polymers with complex architectures such as star-shaped polymers, brush copolymers, polymer networks, and dendritic polymers. However, to implement these polymers in biomaterial and electronic applications any residual metal catalyst must be removed which can be challenging. To remove the issue of metal contamination entirely, organocatalyzed ATRP (OATRP) can be employed. Currently, perylene and derivatives of phenothiazine and phenazine have been used as catalysts for OATRP. The focus of this talk is the use of a new class of phenoxazine catalysts for OATRP which are capable of producing polymers with a range of molecular weights and low dispersities. Additionally, computational modeling and fluorimetry experiments are used to compare isoelectronic phenoxazine and phenothiazine catalysts.