Common interests with polymer chemistry

For those familiar with polymer chemistry, polyurethane may be a confusing term. Unlike polyethylene, the polymerization product of ethylene, a polyurethane is not the result of the polymerization of urethane. To add to the confusion, a urethane is a specific chemical bond that comprises a very small percentage of the bonds of a polyurethane. Since we are interested in chemical and physical effects, polyether or polyester is a more descriptive term for the most common bond in a polyurethane. Despite this complication, it is instructive to begin by talking about the methane bond from which the polyurethane name is derived. The general structure or bond that forms the basis of this chemistry is the urethane linkage shown in Figure 2.1. 

Industry, seeing a need for training those employed by them in the art and science of polymer chemistry, began to experiment. Certain groups with common research interests and needs joined together to form societies which in turn offered short courses typically in areas of very specialized applications. Societies active in these ventures include SPE, PRI, ACS, APS and SPI. Several companies such as Hercules, Monsanto, and DuPont sponsored or permitted informal courses in polymer related topics to be presented during company time and/or using company facilities. The "teachers" or discussion leaders could be either one of the participants or an invited academic or industrial "expert". These "in-house" courses have increased in popularity and today are part of many companies schedules of activity. 

He held this post until 1967 when he returned to the UK as a lecturer at the University of Essex at Colchester. Here he assisted Professor Manfred Gordon to establish a Polymer Research Consortium, involving physicists, mathematicians, and chemists in polymer science problems of common interest. After two years in Essex, he was appointed to a senior lectureship in the new University of Stirling in Scotland, in 1969 and subsequently succeeded Professor R. P. Bell to the chair of chemistry in 1973. From 1974 to 1988 he was Head of Department at Stirling, but moved to Heriot-Watt University as foundation professor of chemistry of materials, the post he held until retirement in 1998. From then to the present, he has been Professor Emeritus (Research) and has continued working with his research group. 

The combination of bio-inspired structure elements and classical polymer chemistry provides promising opportunities to design polymeric materials with unique solution and solid state properties. Examples are rod-coil type polymers comprising hehcal polypeptide and flexible vinyl polymer blocks. Block copolymers of this architecture are of interest from both functional and structural points of view. Compared to simple coil-coil block copoljmers the self-assembling of the rod-coil block copolymers is not only controlled by the microphase separation, but also by the tendency to form anisotropic supramole-cular assemblies. These competitive processes can lead to morphologies which are different from those commonly observed for block copolymers.f ... 

The fact that silsesquioxane molecules like 2 7 contain covalently bonded reactive functionalities make them promising monomers for polymerization reactions or for grafting these monomers to polymer chains. In recent years this has been the basis for the development of novel hybrid materials, which offer a variety of useful properties.3,4 This area of applied silsesquioxane chemistry has been largely developed by Lichtenhan et al.4 With respect to catalysis research, the chemistry of metallasilsesquioxanes also receives considerable current interest.1,2,10,21 As mentioned above, incompletely condensed silsesquioxanes of the type R7Si7Og(OH)3 (2-7, Scheme 4) share astonishing structural similarities with p-tridymite and p-cristobalite and are thus quite realistic models for the silanol sites on silica surfaces.1,2,21 26 Metal complexes derived from 2-7 are therefore commonly regarded as realistic models for industrially important metal catalysts immobilized on silica surfaces.1,2,22 It is... 

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