Publications related to Solid-state structure, organization and properties of peptide-synthetic hybrid block copolymers

Soft Mechanochemistry of Disulfide-Crosslinked Polymer Networks

Mechanochemistry harnesses mechanical force to facilitate chemical reactions. Traditionally, the field of polymer mechanochemistry has used methods to activate chemical bonds, which use forces that are larger than those that are required to break a covalen ...

EPFL2024

Near-Room-Temperature Detection of Aromatic Compounds with Inkjet-Printed Plasticized Polymer Composites

Thomas Maeder, Jürgen Brugger, Mohammadmahdi Kiaee

Chemiresistive gas sensors composed of a thermoplastic polymer matrix and conductive fillers offer various advantages for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including low power consumption due to near-room-temperature operation, high sensitivity, ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Organic matters, but inorganic matters too: column examination of elevated mercury sorption on low organic matter aquifer material using concentrations and stable isotope ratios

Lorenz Schwab

Sorption of mercury (Hg) in soils is suggested to be predominantly associated with organic matter (OM). However, there is a growing collection of research that suggests that clay minerals and oxides are also important solid phases for the sorption of solu ...

2024

Architecturally Diverse Polymer Brushes Prepared via Surface-Initiated Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization

Sabrina Sant

Polymer brushes, which are polymers anchored to a solid substrate by one chainend, have the ability to modify the properties of an underlying substrate, offering intriguing features such as enhanced lubrication, reduced friction, colloidal stability, and a ...

EPFL2023

Bottlebrush Dielectric Elastomers with Improved Properties for Actuation

Yeerlan Adeli

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA) are elastic capacitors composed of a pair of compliant electrodes and a soft dielectric elastomer film sandwiched in between. This kind of stretchable capacitors can be actuated when charged, can generate electricity fr ...

EPFL2023

Revealing the Formation Dynamics of Janus Polymer Particles: Insights from Experiments and Molecular Dynamics

Philip Robin Loche

Seeded emulsion polymerization is one of the best-known methods for preparing polymer particles with a controlled size, composition, and shape. It first requires the preparation of seed particles, which are then swollen with additional monomer (the same as ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Influence of the molecular weight and physical properties of a thermoplastic polymer on its dynamic wetting behavior

Valentin Rougier

The wetting dynamics of molten thermoplastic polymers, which are known to influence the force balance of the triple line, are not understood properly despite their importance in many industrial processes. In particular, the influence of the molecular weigh ...

Elsevier2023

Reinforced Supramolecular Networks of End Functionalized Polymers for Tailored Thermomechanical Property Profiles

Yevhen Hryshunin

Thermoset rubbers give rise to elastomers with tunable stiffness and high resilience but are not recyclable. Thermoplastic elastomers can address this problem but their broad applicability is impeded by either limited operating temperatures or inferior ela ...

EPFL2023

Supramolecular Polymer Brushes Grown by Surface-Initiated Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization from Cucurbit[7]uril-based Non-Covalent Initiators

Harm-Anton Klok, Friederike Katharina Metze, Irene Filipucci

Polymer brushes are densely grafted, chain end-tethered assemblies of polymers that can be produced via surface-initiated polymerization. Typically, this is accomplished using initiators or chain transfer agents that are covalently attached to the substrat ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2023

Tailor-made Piezoelectric Elastomer Materials

Francis Owusu

Recent advancements in miniature devices with higher computational capabilities and ultralow power consumption have accelerated the development of wearable sensors, actuators, and energy harvesters everywhere. The ultimate aim of such a technological revol ...

EPFL2023

Opportunities, Challenges, and Pitfalls in Making, Characterizing, and Understanding Polymer Brushes

Harm-Anton Klok

Polymer brushes have been theoretically described, their behavior under diverse conditions has been modeled, and their preparation via surface-initiated polymerizations (SIPs) has been progressively refined. However, despite three decades of research endea ...

American Chemical Society2023

Supramolecular Polymer Brushes

Friederike Katharina Metze

Thin polymer coatings present a method to modify the surface properties of underlying substrates. Polymer-coated surfaces have been used as anticorrosive materials, surfaces with special wetting properties, antifriction materials, and as materials for biom ...

EPFL2023

On-Demand Cross-Linkable Bottlebrush Polymers for Voltage- Driven Artificial Muscles

Frank Nüesch, Francis Owusu, Yeerlan Adeli

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) generate motion resembling natural muscles in reliability, adaptability, elongation, and frequency of operation. They are highly attractive in implantable soft robots or artificial organs. However, many applications of ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Data-driven design of organic electronic materials

Jacob Terence Blaskovits

Singlet fission (SF) is a multiexciton-generating process whereby an excited state singlet (S1) is converted into two lower-energy triplets (T1). The inclusion of a SF-capable material into a photovoltaic device offers the potential for the absorption of p ...

EPFL2023

koopmans: An Open-Source Package for Accurately and Efficiently Predicting Spectral Properties with Koopmans Functionals

Nicola Marzari, Giovanni Borghi, Ngoc Linh Nguyen, Nicola Colonna, Riccardo De Gennaro, Edward Baxter Linscott, Andrea Ferretti

Over the past decade we have developed Koopmans functionals, a computationally efficient approach for predicting spectral properties with an orbital-density-dependent functional framework. These functionals impose a generalized piecewise linearity conditio ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Automatic and high-precision microseismic monitoring of progressive failure prior, during, and after tunnel excavation

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Christophe Nussbaum, Seyyedmaalek Momeni

Acoustic emission (AE) monitoring is commonly used to inspect the health of a structure continuously. During fracture processes elastic waves of AE are created and emitted, and sensors can capture these waves. The acquired signals can be processed to track ...

2023

Polymer Translocation through Nanometer Pores

Maria-Alexandra Paun

In this paper the loaded polymer transport and its escape via a nanometer size aperture, virtually by nanomembrane, the polymer being moved by an exterior electrostatic field, has been studied. Assuming a linear dependency of the friction coefficient on th ...

MDPI2022

Anticancer ruthenium(II) tris(pyrazolyl)methane complexes with bioactive co-ligands

Paul Joseph Dyson, Sarah Alexandra Pais Pereira

In comparison with Ru-II-arene compounds, the medicinal potential of homologous Ru-II-tpm compounds [tpm = tris(pyrazolyl)methane] is underexplored. Pyridine, 4-pyridinemethanol and four functionalized pyridines, synthesized from the esterification of 4-py ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2022

Extraction and controlled functionalization of lignin for materials applications

Stefania Bertella

Lignin is a renewable aromatic polymer that due to its abundance and unique chemical structure is a promising candidate to replace aromatic materials that are currently sourced from fossil oil. The same structure of lignin poses however drawbacks for its v ...

EPFL2022

Assessing the persistence of chalcogen bonds in solution with neural network potentials

Anne-Clémence Corminboeuf, Veronika Juraskova, Rubén Laplaza Solanas, Frédéric Célerse

Non-covalent bonding patterns are commonly harvested as a design principle in the field of catalysis, supramolecular chemistry, and functional materials to name a few. Yet, their computational description generally neglects finite temperature and environme ...

2022