Osborn Club Lecture

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Date/Time:Monday, 09 Dec 2013 at 7:00 pm
Location:1420 Molecular Biology Building
Phone:515-294-2036
Channel:Groups, governance
Categories:Lectures
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Eric Cochran, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, will present "Thermoplastic Elastomers from Multifunctional Biomonomers: Green Materials Without Compromise?"

"In this talk, I will provide an overview of our recent work with the application of controlled free radical polymerization chemistries to produce hyper-branched thermoplastic elastomers from multi-functional bio-monomers such as triglycerides, glycerine, or even potentially phenolic residues from lignin. Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT) both use the free radical propagation mechanism to produce homopolymers, statistical copolymers, and block copolymers with tailored architectures. This is made possible -- through two very different chemical mechanisms -- by the limitation of the free radical concentration to the picomolar range. We have tailored these two chemistries to copolymerize multifunctional acrylated bio-monomers (e.g., from various vegetable oils) into either statistical or block architectures with styrene as the hard segment to form economical thermoplastic elastomers up to 750 kDa in molar mass."