Chemistry World Blog

— MACROlogo

So the second day at the Macro 2010 meeting was jam-packed with talks about polymer chemistry to enthuse the audience. Not only were there eleven parallel symposia to attend, in the evening there was the poster session and a panel discussion lead by young polymer scientists to discuss the support available for researchers when they start out in an academic position.

The scientific lectures were, as always, up to the usual high standard. From all the parallel symposia there was a great mix of chemistry ranging from polymers for biomedical applications to greener methods to produce polymers.

— aging

When you think of the aging process, you generally think about us as humans getting older. Benny Freeman from the University of Texas, talked about the aging process of glassy polymer membranes. He explained that all polymer membranes of this type age – as they get older the permeability of the membrane decreases due to an increase in deformities and therefore its usefulness decreases. However, he said that simply heating the polymer up can reverse the aging process as this reorders the polymer chains in the membrane renewing their usefulness. Unfortunately it is not that easy for us as humans – the battle against aging may never be won.

Another lecture that was interesting, more for an aesthetically pleasing reason than for the chemistry I must confess, was the talk from Jun Terao of Kyoto University, Japan, on molecular wires. He described how you can insulate conducting polymer wires with cyclodextrins in order to enhance their conductive properties. The polymers he showed us looked very much like long necklaces with large cyclodextrins insulating the polymer chains at intervals along the chains.

I spent quite a lot of time in the biodegradable and sustainable polymers symposium today where the talks ranged from polymers made from isosorbide – a chemical made from the glucose in corn, to polymers such as polyurethanes made from vegetable or soybean oil. Isosorbide is an inexpensive industrially available compound that is biodegradable. When incorporated into polymer structures, it adds stiffness to the polymer chain, whilst being non-toxic.

— soybean

Zengshe Liu stated that ‘soybean oil is the second largest crop after corn’ and that ’20 billion pounds of soybean oil is produced in the US each year, but only 590 million pounds are used in industrial applications’. He explained that soybean oil had the potential to be used on a large scale to make biopolymers. He described the process of using liquid carbon dioxide under pressure, at room temperature, in the presence of a lewis acid catalyst to produce polymers with glycerol units in the middle of the long fatty acid chain, rather than the glycerol being on the end of the chain.  The biodegradable and sustainable polymers symposium always seemed to have a large audience throughout the day reflecting perhaps the opinion that biodegradable polymers from sustainable sources rather than from petroleum products are the future of consumer goods.

The final lecture that I want to mention today was from Brian Saunders from the University of Manchester, UK. He described injectable gels that could be used for load support within intervertebral disks and injectable gels for delivering cells into the body. Even though there seems to be some way to go before his research can help relieve the pain from spinal back-ache or before microgels that deliver cells into the body and then biodegrade leaving the cells free to do their good work are achieved, his enthusiasm for his field was what really shone through.

Indeed, all the talks I went to today described potential solutions to real problems that could affect you and me. I hope the UK government realise how vital scientific research is before they decide to cut all our funding to help reduce the deficit.

Mike Brown