Plastics enable our modern standard of life from safety and shelter to advanced technologies in electronics and aerospace applications. Thus, we must accelerate fundamental research to innovate advanced polymer materials with new properties. Our modern lifestyle is coming at a severe cost, however, with serious and legitimate economic, energy, and environmental concerns in using plastic. The very materials that contribute to advanced technologies and our modern standard of living are also slowly smothering our planet and the life on it. Looking to the future, we need to continue developing innovative materials with new properties, but we must do so using renewable materials from sustainable sources that either degrade into useable starting materials or that can be reformed to create a product of equal or greater value. To enable new technologies and adequately support our growing human population we need drop-in materials that are sustainable and amicable to a closed-loop, circular economy. Herein, this talk focuses on the development and characterization of new diol and diacid monomers to form biodegradable polyesters using step-growth polymerization. We include a discussion about synthesis optimization to achieve high yielding monomers and polymers with glass transition temperatures ≥80 °C. We demonstrate polymer processing into thin films and microfibers using a custom-built centrifugal force spinner. We also include an evaluation of the polymer’s corresponding structure-property relationship with respect to mechanical, optical, diffusive, and deteriorative properties.

Step-growth polymerization of new bulky monomers for high Tg polyesters and microfibers

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.