Dec, 2023
Congratulations to Matias on publishing the pterodactylane story in JACS! A tour de force of experiments and calculations to elucidate its mechanochemistry.
Warm welcome to our new postdoc Leos from Zurich!
Best of luck to Dylan and Francesca on your future careers!
Congratulations to Matias on publishing the pterodactylane story in JACS! A tour de force of experiments and calculations to elucidate its mechanochemistry.
Warm welcome to our new postdoc Leos from Zurich!
Best of luck to Dylan and Francesca on your future careers!
Dec 1, 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Kayla Barker! PhD#9. Congratulations on advancing our understanding of coacervation!
Congratulations to Dr. Kayla Barker! PhD#9. Congratulations on advancing our understanding of coacervation!
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Apr, 2023
Jinghui's work on mechanical deconstruction of rotaxane and release of guest molecules is published in CCS Chemistry. First book on ladder polymers is out, covering the synthesis, properties, applications, and perspectives on the fascinating ladder-type polymers and discrete molecules. |
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Mar, 2023
Congratulations to Dr. JD Feist! PhD#8. Congratulations on your many endeavors in overlooked chemistry, sustainable polymers, and lots of mechanical tests! |
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Jan, 2023
Welcome to visiting student Nagi Mizutani from the University of Tokyo!
Welcome to visiting student Nagi Mizutani from the University of Tokyo!
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Nov, 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Jinghui Yang! PhD#7. It will take too many cakes to showcase the beautiful mechanophores you developed. May the force be with you! |
Nov, 2022
Congratulations to former student Junzhe for publishing his work on using competitor molecules to reversibly modulate the mechanical properties of viscoelastic hydrogels in ACS Macro Lett.!
Congratulations to former student Junzhe for publishing his work on using competitor molecules to reversibly modulate the mechanical properties of viscoelastic hydrogels in ACS Macro Lett.!
Sept, 2022
Welcome to visiting student Hirogi Yokochi from Tokyo Tech!
Welcome to visiting student Hirogi Yokochi from Tokyo Tech!
Aug, 2022
We are thrilled to be part of an EFRC team led by Prof. Sottos to develop recyclable thermosets!
We are thrilled to be part of an EFRC team led by Prof. Sottos to develop recyclable thermosets!
July, 2022
Farewell to the visiting student Christian and wish you all the best for your next career stage!
Congratulations to Ke, Xianglin, Matias, and Zexin for publishing their work on regioselective activation of cyclobutadienoids to create curved carbon structures in J. Am. Chem. Soc.!
Farewell to the visiting student Christian and wish you all the best for your next career stage!
Congratulations to Ke, Xianglin, Matias, and Zexin for publishing their work on regioselective activation of cyclobutadienoids to create curved carbon structures in J. Am. Chem. Soc.!
March, 2022
Congratulations to Dan and former student Junzhe for winning the 2022 PMSE Future Faculty Award!
Almost a decade in the making for CANAL ladder polymers going from chemistry development to membranes with unprecedented performance for gas separations. Tuning the molecular structures can significantly boost the separation selectivity. While many questions remain to be explored, the future of CANAL ladder polymers looks bright!
Congratulations to Holden, Joe, Ashley, and our collaborators from the Smith lab at MIT and the Pinnau lab at KAUST on publishing the exciting results in Science!!
Congratulations to Dan and former student Junzhe for winning the 2022 PMSE Future Faculty Award!
Almost a decade in the making for CANAL ladder polymers going from chemistry development to membranes with unprecedented performance for gas separations. Tuning the molecular structures can significantly boost the separation selectivity. While many questions remain to be explored, the future of CANAL ladder polymers looks bright!
Congratulations to Holden, Joe, Ashley, and our collaborators from the Smith lab at MIT and the Pinnau lab at KAUST on publishing the exciting results in Science!!
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Feb, 2022
Welcome to visiting scholar Christian from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany!
Welcome to visiting scholar Christian from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany!
Jan, 2022
Joyful welcome for 1st year students Zekun and Amy and Postdoc Dylan to officially join the group!
Congratulations to JD and Matias for winning the prestigious 2021 Xia Group Awards!
Joyful welcome for 1st year students Zekun and Amy and Postdoc Dylan to officially join the group!
Congratulations to JD and Matias for winning the prestigious 2021 Xia Group Awards!
Nov, 2021
- Congratulations to former students Junzhe , Sean, and undergrad Karis on publication in Adv. Mater.! In collaboration with Prof. Jian Qin, we established a universal correlation between the terminal relaxation time of viscoelastic hydrogels and the exchange rate of crosslinks. This was enabled by independent tuning of the crosslinking density and exchange kinetics of crosslinks using a catalyst.
- Congratulations to JD on winning the William Johnson award from the chemistry department!
- JD and Dan report a simple and versatile method in Nat. Chem. to synthesize degradable polymers with tunable properties while retaining the features you love about controlled ROMP! Sprinkle some dihydrofuran next time when you ROMP :)
Sept, 2021
Warm welcome to the rotation students, Amy, Anna, Rachael, and Zekun!
Warm welcome to the rotation students, Amy, Anna, Rachael, and Zekun!
July, 2021
- Our collaborative work with the Craig and Martinez groups on understanding the mechanochemistry of ladder-type mechanophores is published in JACS - Congratulations to Matias and team!
- Our collaborative work with the Qin group on discovering an unprecedented loop-in behavior of polyelectrolyte coacervation is published in Sci. Adv. - Congratulations to Junzhe and team!
- Our collaborative work with the Zheng group on developing B/polymer composites is published in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces - Congratulations to Yue and team!
- New group photo taken after 2 years since the last pre-covid one!
Feb, 2021
Congratulations to Jinghui on publishing his work on a robust (almost) hydrocarbon polymer that can be transformed into acid-degradable polymer under mechanical stress!
Congratulations to Jinghui on publishing his work on a robust (almost) hydrocarbon polymer that can be transformed into acid-degradable polymer under mechanical stress!
Jan, 2021
Hearty welcome for 1st year students Francesca and Erica to officially join the group!
Congratulations to Jinghui and Dan for winning the prestigious :) 2020 Xia Group Awards!
Hearty welcome for 1st year students Francesca and Erica to officially join the group!
Congratulations to Jinghui and Dan for winning the prestigious :) 2020 Xia Group Awards!
Dec, 2020
Our journey with cyclopropene polymerization (and lack of) is summarized in Acc. Chem. Res: A Palette of Surprising Reactivity, created by artist Ben E.
Fluoro-ladderene to golden fluorinated polyacetylene published in Nat. Chem. Congratulations to Ben B and all members of the team!
Our journey with cyclopropene polymerization (and lack of) is summarized in Acc. Chem. Res: A Palette of Surprising Reactivity, created by artist Ben E.
Fluoro-ladderene to golden fluorinated polyacetylene published in Nat. Chem. Congratulations to Ben B and all members of the team!
Aug, 2020
Jinghui and Matias' benzoladderene 2019 paper was selected in the JACS Young Investigators issue!
A few days later, they report a new generation of mechanophore monomers in JACS! Multi-gram synthesis, various substituents to tune electroptical properties, ROMP all the way to DP=10000! and mechanically activated by rapid stirring of solution!
Jinghui and Matias' benzoladderene 2019 paper was selected in the JACS Young Investigators issue!
A few days later, they report a new generation of mechanophore monomers in JACS! Multi-gram synthesis, various substituents to tune electroptical properties, ROMP all the way to DP=10000! and mechanically activated by rapid stirring of solution!
July, 2020
1) Welcome Dr. Dan Lee from UW and Dr. Xianglin Yin from Purdue to join the group!
2) Congrats to Jessica, SoYoung, and Ben on the study of ROMP of 1-Me-cyclopropenes in Macromolecules! Again, substituents strongly affect their reactivity. This papers concludes our 6-year campaign (for now) on discovering the surprising reactivities of various CPEs.
1) Welcome Dr. Dan Lee from UW and Dr. Xianglin Yin from Purdue to join the group!
2) Congrats to Jessica, SoYoung, and Ben on the study of ROMP of 1-Me-cyclopropenes in Macromolecules! Again, substituents strongly affect their reactivity. This papers concludes our 6-year campaign (for now) on discovering the surprising reactivities of various CPEs.
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Jun, 2020
Congratulations to Dr. Holden Lai and Dr. Jessica Su, PhD#5 and 6 of our lab! First and hopefully only virtual defenses of our lab. Thank you for developing CANAL polymers into membranes for gas separation and taming the strained rings to advance polymer synthesis! And thank you for being such fabulous lab citizens! You will be so missed. |
Apr, 2020
Newly published: 1) general mechanism of CANAL; 2) air separation membranes from CANAL-TB ladder polymers in collaboration with Prof. Pinnau.
Mar, 2020
Our lab is temporarily closed amid the battle of human vs coronavirus. We stay intellectually active but shelter-in-place to help human win sooner!
Newly published: 1) general mechanism of CANAL; 2) air separation membranes from CANAL-TB ladder polymers in collaboration with Prof. Pinnau.
Mar, 2020
Our lab is temporarily closed amid the battle of human vs coronavirus. We stay intellectually active but shelter-in-place to help human win sooner!
Jan, 2020
Happy 2020 everyone! 3 papers out in the first month:
Cyclic enol ethers are effective ROMP monomers! Congrats to JD for this surprising discovery and development of depolymerizable and degradable poly(enol ether)s in JACS!
Our collaborative mechanistic study with the Martinez and Burns groups on the mechanochemistry of ladderane/ene is reported in Nat. Chem., revealing two significant dynamic effects: 1) cascade activation with rate acceleration; 2) bifurcation on potential energy surface determines product distribution. Congrats to Zhixing and the Stanford team!
Congrats to Ben and Jessica on using AROMP to synthesize degradable polyacetals in ACS Macro Lett!
Congrats to Holden on winning a NAMS student award to speak at the International Congress on Membranes in London!
Happy 2020 everyone! 3 papers out in the first month:
Cyclic enol ethers are effective ROMP monomers! Congrats to JD for this surprising discovery and development of depolymerizable and degradable poly(enol ether)s in JACS!
Our collaborative mechanistic study with the Martinez and Burns groups on the mechanochemistry of ladderane/ene is reported in Nat. Chem., revealing two significant dynamic effects: 1) cascade activation with rate acceleration; 2) bifurcation on potential energy surface determines product distribution. Congrats to Zhixing and the Stanford team!
Congrats to Ben and Jessica on using AROMP to synthesize degradable polyacetals in ACS Macro Lett!
Congrats to Holden on winning a NAMS student award to speak at the International Congress on Membranes in London!
Oct, 2019
Jessica reported a second class of cyclopropenes that exhibit single addition reactivity in Angew. Simple change of Me to Ph substituent completely changes the reactivity.
A nice preview from Hawker and coworkers "the Allure of Sequence Control" about our work on sequence control via single monomer addition. Also former student Ben Elling wrote about his trajectory on the potential energy surface of grad school and beyond.
Jessica reported a second class of cyclopropenes that exhibit single addition reactivity in Angew. Simple change of Me to Ph substituent completely changes the reactivity.
A nice preview from Hawker and coworkers "the Allure of Sequence Control" about our work on sequence control via single monomer addition. Also former student Ben Elling wrote about his trajectory on the potential energy surface of grad school and beyond.
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Aug, 2019
Congratulations to Ben and Jessica! They finally cracked the secret code of cyclopropenes (it was once so mysterious!) and achieved controlled single addition of cyclopropenes at any desired locations along a living ROMP polymer - See the story in Chem and highlight by C&EN. Let us know if you would like to try these cyclopropenes for your research! 4th PhD minted! Congratulations to Dr. Zexin Jin on his heroic efforts to develop the synthetic methodology, design aesthetically pleasing molecules, and understand the effects of CBD antiaromaticity! He is the only student in our group who doesn't work with polymers and established our project on CBD-containing polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons from scratch. We will miss you Dr. "Gin" -- wish you all the best for postdoc in the Nuckolls group! Holden figured out the tricks to make very high MW (>300 KDa) CANAL ladder polymers, which formed nice membranes for gas separation, and discovered changing simple substituents can significantly increase permeability without compromising selectivity. The collaborative work with the Smith lab (MIT) was published in Macromolecules. |
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July, 2019
We are enjoying a busy and fun summer with undergrads, Soyoung, Karis, Jonathan, Zixuan, high school RISE intern, Leslie, and 0-yr grad student, Ashley. Fantastic to see this unusual gender unbalance! |
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May, 2019
3rd PhD minted! Congratulations to Dr. Junzhe Lou, our group's polymer guru and 1st PhD in MSE! He's been a lone star and trailblazer in dynamic polymer networks and polyelectrolytes in our group, setting a role model on how to be exploratory, creative, meticulous, and truly interdisciplinary. Junzhe also managed to win the People's Choice Award in the SPC poster symposium before heading to Harvard! |
Apr, 2019
Benzoladderenes: Congrats to Jinghui and Matias on a new family of polymechanophores that transform from nonconjugated to conjugated polymers in response to force, reporting in JACS! Jinghui was also awarded the prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship!!
Benzoladderenes: Congrats to Jinghui and Matias on a new family of polymechanophores that transform from nonconjugated to conjugated polymers in response to force, reporting in JACS! Jinghui was also awarded the prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship!!
Mar, 2019
Two prestigious awards won by students!
Congratulations to Zexin for the Department William Johnson Award, which is awarded to one student per year to recognize outstanding academic and research achievements!
Congratulations to Matias for the NDSEG fellowship!
The group celebrated their awards with a tuxedo cake and an award dinner.
Two prestigious awards won by students!
Congratulations to Zexin for the Department William Johnson Award, which is awarded to one student per year to recognize outstanding academic and research achievements!
Congratulations to Matias for the NDSEG fellowship!
The group celebrated their awards with a tuxedo cake and an award dinner.
Feb, 2019
Thanks to the hard work from the past and present group members, Yan was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship!
Congrats to Junzhe and Sean on using well-defined polyelectrolytes and rigorously measured phase diagrams to unambiguously reveal the effect of local polarity on coacervation, which was quantitatively captured by a simple model developed by the Qin group (Stanford), published in ACS Cent. Sci.
Congrats to Holden and Mahmoud on reporting CANAL ladder polyimides for membrane gas separation in Chem. Mater.! - our first paper on membrane gas separation in collaboration with the Pinnau group (KAUST).
We look forward to more exciting work from the fruitful collaborations!
Thanks to the hard work from the past and present group members, Yan was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship!
Congrats to Junzhe and Sean on using well-defined polyelectrolytes and rigorously measured phase diagrams to unambiguously reveal the effect of local polarity on coacervation, which was quantitatively captured by a simple model developed by the Qin group (Stanford), published in ACS Cent. Sci.
Congrats to Holden and Mahmoud on reporting CANAL ladder polyimides for membrane gas separation in Chem. Mater.! - our first paper on membrane gas separation in collaboration with the Pinnau group (KAUST).
We look forward to more exciting work from the fruitful collaborations!
Jan, 2019
Warm welcome to first year grad students Kayla Barker (Fang, TAMU) and Matias Horst (Franz, Duke) to officially join the group and Prof. Yu Zhao (NUS) for his sabbatical!
Warm welcome to first year grad students Kayla Barker (Fang, TAMU) and Matias Horst (Franz, Duke) to officially join the group and Prof. Yu Zhao (NUS) for his sabbatical!
Dec, 2018
Congratulations to Yewchin on reporting a new method of synthesizing macromonomers and narrow-disperse brush block copolymers in Macromolecules and Zexin on reporting acene-like molecules containing strong antiaromaticiy with tunable electronics and packing in Angew Chem!
Congratulations to Yewchin on reporting a new method of synthesizing macromonomers and narrow-disperse brush block copolymers in Macromolecules and Zexin on reporting acene-like molecules containing strong antiaromaticiy with tunable electronics and packing in Angew Chem!
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Oct, 2018
Second PhD minted! Congratulations to Dr. Yewchin Teo, who has done it all, from brush and ladder polymers to conjugated materials! We miss you and wish you all the best for your career back in Singapore! |
Sept, 2018
Warm welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Joe Ahn from the Fu and Peters groups at Caltech!
Congratulations to Jessica on the synthesis and mechanoactivation of the first mechanically responsive block copolymers in JACS and Zexin on a new member of [3]naphthylene in Syn Lett as part of the cluster of Synthesis of Materials!
Warm welcome to our new postdoc Dr. Joe Ahn from the Fu and Peters groups at Caltech!
Congratulations to Jessica on the synthesis and mechanoactivation of the first mechanically responsive block copolymers in JACS and Zexin on a new member of [3]naphthylene in Syn Lett as part of the cluster of Synthesis of Materials!
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Aug, 2018
First PhD minted! Bittersweet to see a founding member and cyclopropene guru leave. All the best to Dr. Ben Elling for his postdoc with Prof. Dichtel at Northwestern! |
May, 2018
Interested in clean and quantitative end-functionalization of living ROMP polymers? Check out Ben's method using single-addition cyclopropenes. Let us know if you would like to try cyclopropenes for your next ROMP end-functionalization.
Yewchin's CBD-fused electron-poor phenazines published in Org. Lett. -- variable degrees of antiaromaticity strongly affect band gaps and optical properties.
Interested in clean and quantitative end-functionalization of living ROMP polymers? Check out Ben's method using single-addition cyclopropenes. Let us know if you would like to try cyclopropenes for your next ROMP end-functionalization.
Yewchin's CBD-fused electron-poor phenazines published in Org. Lett. -- variable degrees of antiaromaticity strongly affect band gaps and optical properties.
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Apr, 2018
The group gave a strong mechanochemical farewell to Prof. Zhixing Chen. We wish you all the best starting your lab at Peking University! We also warmly welcomed visiting Professor Hiroaki Shimomoto from Ehime University! |
Mar, 2018
Junzhe's trick to temporally modulate the injectability and stability of dynamic hydrogels using a biocompatible catalyst published in Adv. Mater.
Junzhe's trick to temporally modulate the injectability and stability of dynamic hydrogels using a biocompatible catalyst published in Adv. Mater.
Jan, 2018
The group welcomes new students JD (Caltech) and Jinghui (PKU)! Wish Jing all the best for her faculty position at Wuhan University!
The group welcomes new students JD (Caltech) and Jinghui (PKU)! Wish Jing all the best for her faculty position at Wuhan University!
Oct, 2017
Congratulations to Zexin and Yewchin for their JACS paper on [3]naphthylenes and tuning their antiaromaticity!
Congratulations to Zexin and Yewchin for their JACS paper on [3]naphthylenes and tuning their antiaromaticity!
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Sept, 2017
The group enjoyed end-of-summer and farewell party. Best wishes to our visiting scholars Takaaki and Francesco! Check out our review on how to build macromolecular ladders. |
Aug, 2017
Congratulations to Zhixing Chen and the Stanford team for the awesome work featured on the cover of Science!
Learn more about this polymer mechanochemical metamorphosisCommentary from S.L.Craig in Nat. Chem. and S.W.Thomas in Angew. Chem.
Highlights
"Sound switches material from insulator to semiconductor" Nature.com
"Ultrasonic vibrations force a polymer to be a semiconductor" Phys.org
"Polyladderenes unzip to form semiconducting polymers" C&EN
Congratulations to Zhixing Chen and the Stanford team for the awesome work featured on the cover of Science!
Learn more about this polymer mechanochemical metamorphosisCommentary from S.L.Craig in Nat. Chem. and S.W.Thomas in Angew. Chem.
Highlights
"Sound switches material from insulator to semiconductor" Nature.com
"Ultrasonic vibrations force a polymer to be a semiconductor" Phys.org
"Polyladderenes unzip to form semiconducting polymers" C&EN