Synthesis, Characterization and Flow Polymerization of Modular Building Blocks for Functional Biomaterials

Project Description

A key challenge in the development of new biomaterials is the efficient synthesis of scaffolds with diverse chemical, physical, and mechanical properties. One way to meet this challenge is to assemble scaffolds from polymers bearing reactive functionalities that can be modified post-assembly with a broad range of chemical and biological functionality. In this proposal, we aim to develop efficient and scalable methods for the synthesis of reactive monomers and polymers that can be used to fabricate synthetic biomaterials. The reactive functionalities incorporated into the biomaterials scaffolds can then be harnessed to rapidly diversify the chemistry of the materials in a modular way. In particular, we propose to use flow chemistry to synthesize monomers bearing activated ester functionality and subsequently use controlled polymerizations to incorporate these monomers into well-defined, reactive (co)polymers. These reactive parent polymers will then be modified post-polymerization with a variety of functional groups to easily evaluate the influence of polymers chemistry on the resulting materials properties.

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