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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Our planet has been challenged for years by our reckless use of fossil fuels, which has led to the ongoing climate change and energy crisis. The transition to the use of renewable alternative sources has now became urgent and inevitable. The valorization o ...
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 ...
Polymer brushes are a specific class of polymer thin films in which each chain is tethered to the underlying substrate via one chain end. In sufficiently densely grafted assemblies, the individual polymer chains are forced into an extended chain conformati ...
Optical waveguides are one of the most important photonic components. They are indispensable tools in many of todayâ s technologies because of their capacity of guiding light. In particular, compact, low loss, flexible polymer optical waveguides are cruci ...
Phase separation of immiscible fluids is a common phenomenon in polymer chemistry, and is recognized as an important mechanism by which cells compartmentalize their biochemical reactions. Biomolecular condensates are condensed fluid droplets in cells that ...
This Thesis is built around 4 topics, which share in common that they all take advantage of the assets of controlled radical polymerization to either (i) prepare well-defined model systems to address fundamental research questions with regard to the sensit ...
Hydrophilic polymer brushes grown via surface‐initiated polymerization from silicon oxide surfaces can detach or degraft in aqueous media. Degrafting of these chain end‐tethered polymers is believed to involve hydrolysis of bonds at the polymer–substrate i ...
Polymer brushes are typically densely grafted assemblies of polymer chains that are tethered via one end group to a solid substrate. Anchoring linear polymer chains via both end groups to a surface results in loop-type polymer brushes. Although loop polyme ...
The replacement of metals with polymer-based materials is considered to be key to reducing weight, cost, and cycle times in different technological applications, including the automotive and aerospace industries. Semiaromatic polyamides are particularly at ...
Conjugated polymers and small molecules are a promising class of semiconducting materials for application in macroelectronic and energy conversion devices. The development of high performance devices employing this class of semicrystalline materials ultima ...
Thin coatings applied to surfaces dramatically improve the properties of materials. Thus, they have found application in a broad variety of areas including biomedicine, nanotechnology, bioelectronics and optics, amongst others. Polymer brushes prepared via ...
Boosted by the technological advances in experimental techniques, cellular biology is nowadays facing the need for quantitative approaches in order to rationalize the huge amount of collected data. A particularly succesfull theoretical framework is provide ...
Controlled radical polymerization techniques such as RAFT allow fine control over polymer molecular weight and architecture. These techniques, however, do not eliminate compositional drifts in copolymerizations, which are the consequence of differences in ...
Over the last ten years the attention of the pharmaceutical industry has shifted away from small molecules to focus on new biologics such as antibodies, proteins and therapeutic peptides. Herein, peptides have emerged as a particularly interesting category ...
Surface-associated capsular polysaccharides (CPSs) protect bacteria against phage infection and enhance pathogenicity by interfering with the function of the host innate immune system. The CPS of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli K92 is a unique sialic aci ...
Thin, phenylboronic acid-containing polymer coatings are potentially attractive sensory layers for a range of glucose monitoring systems. This contribution presents the synthesis and properties of glucose-sensitive polymer brushes obtained via surface RAFT ...
