Molecular Foundry Seminar

"Combine Weak and Strong Molecular Forces for Designing Dynamic Polymers"

Prof. Zhibin Guan, Department of Chemistry, UC Irvine
Tuesday, April 12th at 1:00 pm, Bldg. 67 - 3111

View the Foundry Seminar Schedule

Abstract:

One research goal of Guan group is attempting to merge supramolecular chemistry and material chemistry for the design of advanced materials. Natural materials employ many elegant strategies to achieve mechanical properties required for survival under harsh and rapidly changing environmental conditions. Thus these remarkable biopolymers often not only have a combination of mechanical properties such as high modulus, toughness, and elasticity, but also exhibit adaptive properties. Inspired by various biological materials, we have designed and synthesized a series of biomimetic modular polymers with supramolecularly folded, energy-absorbing nano-domains as the repeat units.1-5 These new material manifest an exciting combination of key mechanical, as well as adaptive, properties that have until now proven difficult to achieve in man-made macromolecular systems. Single molecule force measurements have revealed sequential unfolding mechanism that contributes to the exceptional mechanical stability. In this presentation, I will discuss the design, computation, synthesis, and single molecule studies of our biomimetic polymers.