Shift toward materials chemistry

Should this shift toward materials chemistry be taken seriously Yes, because materials topics bring vitality to freshman chemistry, which should be fascinating but many times has fallen short of this goal. 

The fifth stationary phase architecture involves chemically derivatized polymeric substrates (CMS). This type of material tends to involve proprietary chemistry, so the actual chemistry used for the derivatization reaction is usually unknown. In general, materials of this sort are of rather substantial capacity, so they have come into vogue in recent years with the general shift toward materials of increasing capacity. The critical difficulty with such materials is the requirement that the derivitization must be constrained to the surface. Reactions that take place beneath the surface in the dense polymer matrix of the substrate will exhibit sluggish mass transport and relatively poor chromatographic performance. Early examples of this stationary phase architecture exhibited relatively poor performance but newer materials such as Showa Denko s IC SI-52 4E illustrate that high-performance materials can indeed be constructed in this manner. 

The subject matter has of course changed a lot. In most areas, the fundamentals are the same, and we have not hesitated to re-use old material where it is appropriate. But there has been a significant shift in inorganic chemistry towards materials chemistry, for which the structural techniques required include some that are quite different to those used to study molecular species. So we have added the word molecular to the title. It doesn t trip off the tongue so easily, but it makes no false promises. 

Near-quantitative conversion of monomer to polymer is standard in these polymerizations, as few side reactions occur other than a small amount of cychc formation common in all polycondensation chemistry [41]. ADMET depolymerization also occurs when unsaturated olefins are exposed to pressures of ethylene gas [42,43]. In this case, the equilibriiun nature of metathesis is shifted towards low molecular weight products under saturation with ethylene. Due to the high catalytic activity of [Ru] and the abihty of [Mo] and [Ru] to create exact structures, ADMET has proven a valuable tool for production of novel polymer structures for material applications as well as model copolymer systems to help elucidate fundamental structure property relationships [5]. 

In general, the most difficult problems require the determination of local properties in complex materials and the relating of local properties to bulk properties. Problems of this type are becoming more important in quantum chemistry with its shift from chemical physics (concerned primarily with microscopic properties) towards physical chemistry (concerned more with macroscopic properties), a shift occurring as theoretical methods and computer capabilities improve. 

For more than 50 years, industrial chemistry has been based on coal, oil, and gas. Hence renewable resources have become less important, but shortage of resources, the greenhouse effect, growth of the world population, and the pursuit of sustainable development have awoken great interest in the energetic and substantial use of renewable resources in industry and research. A lower dependence on crude oil imports and raw material costs is currently accelerating the shift towards chemical products derived from renewable biological feedstocks. 

---