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Research News


04/21/2010

An Old Plastic with a New Structure: Nanoporous Linear Polyethylene

Recent research from the research group of Professor Marc Hillmyer.

Completely linear polyethylene (LPE) exhibits incredible strength, durability, and chemical inertness, and thus finds use in many aspects of our daily lives, from milk containers to car parts to snow boards. New strategies to functionalize this ubiquitous plastic are continually sought to improve the applicability to more technologically advanced products. To this end, graduate students Louis Pitet and Mark Amendt working in Professor Marc Hillmyer’s group combined two ring-opening polymerization mechanisms to synthesize block polymers that were used to template nanoporous membranes. The preparation of nanoporous LPE was recently reported in a communication to the Journal of the American Chemical Society (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2010, ACS ASAP [http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja100985d]). The work was also recently highlighted in a Chemical and Engineering News concentrate (April 12, 2010, p. 29). The synthetic protocol relies on (1) the high functional group tolerance of ruthenium mediated metathesis polymerization to form functionalized LPE and (2) the sacrificial nature of the second component, polylactide, under mildly basic conditions. The organization of block polymers into secondary structures with segregated domains having nanoscopic dimensions (5-50 nm) is well-established. However, this particular system was designed to create a microphase separated system that lacked a well-organized structure. This strategy allows access to bicontinuous morphologies over large composition windows. With respect to porous materials, this translates to easily tailored porosity. Polylactide removal leaves a continuous LPE scaffold with interpenetrating void space. The nanoporous LPE offers a ductile material impervious to degradation in many harsh chemical environments that holds tremendous promise as, for example, Li-ion battery separators.

 

 
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