Art of Polymers celebrates the 100th anniversary of artificial polymers in a concert of music and science, in collaboration with the MONET Project. Biodegradable plastics, building materials that change color under stress, structures that flex and unlock rather than break: these are our hopes for the future of polymers. Together, scientists and musicians will explore these ideas in a concert mixing lecture with acoustic instruments (natural polymers) and musical robotics from the WPI Perception and Robotics Lab. January 29, 2021 @ 7:00PM EST Anyone can get tickets here for this Zoom concert event.

Vitrimers are a class of covalent adaptable networks (CANs) that undergo topology reconfiguration via associative exchange reactions, enabling reprocessing at elevated temperatures. Here, we show that cross-linker reactivity represents an additional design parameter to tune stress relaxation rates in vitrimers. Guided by calculated activation barriers, we prepared a series of cross-linkers with varying reactivity for the conjugate addition—elimination of thiols in a PDMS vitrimer. Surprisingly, despite a wide range of stress relaxation rates, we observe that the flow activation energy of the bulk material is independent of the cross-linker structure. Superposition of storage and loss moduli from frequency sweeps can be performed for different cross-linkers, indicating the same exchange mechanism. We show that we can mix different cross-linkers in a single material in order to further modulate the stress relaxation behavior. Bassil M. El-Zaatari, Jacob S.A. Ishibashi, Julia A. Kalow Article Link

Polymeric metal–organic cages (PolyMOCs) featuring coumarin‐decorated Cu24L24 cuboctahedral metal–organic cages as junctions can be reversibly switched between three redox states in response to light and air. Photoswitchable Sol–Gel Transitions and Catalysis Mediated by Polymer Networks with Coumarin‐Decorated Cu24L24 Metal–Organic Cages as Junctions Nathan J. Oldenhuis, K. Peter Qin, Shu Wang, Hong‐Zhou Ye, Eric A. Alt, Adam P. Willard, Troy Van Voorhis, Stephen L. Craig, and Jeremiah A. Johnson Article Link

MONET trainees Shu Wang and Brian Chen extract DNA from bananas at Go With the Flow, an outreach event with the Society of Rheology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

A BigSMILES note appears in the latest Chemical & Engineering News!

Nearly the entire MONET team has collaborated on the publication of this paper detailing a new structurally based representation system that is capable of handling the stochastic nature of polymers. The proposed system hopes to provide a more effective language for communication within the polymer community and increase cohesion between the researchers within the community. BigSMILES: A Structurally-Based Line Notation for Describing Macromolecules Tzyy-Shyang Lin, Connor W. Coley, Hidenobu Mochigase, Haley K. Beech, Wencong Wang, Zi Wang, Eliot Woods, Stephen L. Craig, Jeremiah A. Johnson, Julia A. Kalow, Klavs F. Jensen, and Bradley D. Olsen Article Link

Well, not really, but we did send word! Steve Craig and contributing MONET graduate student Patricia Johnson discussed the Center, the impact of scientific research, and other topics today with Joey Nelson, an aide to Sen. Thom Tillis, and others. So grateful for the open conversation!

Shu Wang has successfully defended his thesis "Bridging Molecular Mechanochemistry and Network Fracture Mechanics". Congratulations Dr. Wang!

Steven Chapman (Kalow lab postdoc) has been elected to join the leadership team. Steven will work in Higher Education & Professional Development while Yunyan moves into the Center Management role. Thanks to them both for agreeing to join the leadership team, and also to Scott Danielsen who will rotate off after his service through Phase I and into the launch of Phase II.

The team at last gets to meet in person! We came together in Durham to discuss the MONET mission, collaborative research opportunities, and our Broader Impacts plans.

Scott Danielsen (Rubinstein lab postdoc) and Yunyan Sun (Moore lab graduate student) have been elected as trainee representatives to the leadership team. Scott will work in Center Management, and Yunyan will work in Higher Education & Professional Development.

We are ecstatic to begin as a Phase II Center today! We look forward to new collaborative research that will develop the knowledge and methods to enable molecular-level, chemical control of polymer network properties and function.