Enhancing Polymer Sustainability via Stereo- and Sequence-Controlled Catalysis

Polymer sustainability has quickly become a global environmental concern, where an estimated 4.9 GTons of polymer waste currently exist in the environment.  Central to addressing this challenge is the generation of polymers with robust materials properties that also embed or encode end-of-use; however, access to such high-performance materials have been limited by selective and scalable catalytic methods. In this talk, I will share some of our group's recent advances in designing highly active and selective catalysts for the (de)polymerization of oxygenated (co)polymers through ring-opening polymerization. I will share how controlling the structure and dynamics of rare-earth, group II, and group XII compounds can enable the design of novel catalytic processes capable of exquisite control of polymer stereochemistry, sequence, and molecular weight to access high-performance, biodegradable materials.