FUNCTIONAL POLYMER LABORATORY

Motivated by the desire to create novel materials, which exhibit currently unavailable properties and enable new applications, our primary research interests are the design, synthesis and investigation of structure-property relationships of functional polymers, in particular polymers with advanced optic and/or electronic properties. This broad class of materials is attracting significant interest, because it combines the advantages of polymers - low cost, ease of processing and a range of attractive mechanical characteristics - with the exceptional, readily-tailored properties of functional organic molecules. Most of our current projects relate to one of four core areas:

  Semiconducting Conjugated Polymers

  Stimuli-Responsive Polymers 

  Biomimetic Materials

  Supramolecular Metallopolymers

In particular the ability to design the chemical structure of macromolecular systems virtually at will, but also the possibility to exert control over their supramolecular architecture allows one to change the properties of this broad class of materials over a wide range. For the efficient development of new polymers it is of fundamental importance to develop a predictive understanding for the relation between the relevant molecular parameters and the macroscopic property of interest. Our interests and activities are therefore highly interdisciplinary and range from the synthesis of new monomers and polymers - which involves organic and organometallic chemistry - to advanced polymer processing, to the in-depth investigation and (in some cases) technological exploitation of these materials. Architectural control at the nanometer length scale is an important design tool for many of our projects. Supramolecular chemistry has emerged as another important aspect. We employ various (macro)molecular assembly processes as polymerization tools, but are similarly interested to exploit specific intermolecular interactions for the formation of targeted supramolecular architectures.