(51d) Taking Measure of Modern Polymer Synthesis

The last two decades have seen an explosion in the variety of molecular structures that can be prepared via advanced polymerization methods. This talk will survey the state of the art in polymer synthesis, and present some of the major unsolved challenges associated with confirming structure and quantifying purity of the highly sophisticated molecules anticipated to enable the next half century of soft materials innovation. In particular, the use of adsorption based separation methods hold tremendous promise, but are hindered by difficult method development, which has severely curtailed wide-spread adoption. This is an area where improved measurements and modeling of basic tethered polymer chain-surface interactions may enable tremendous insight and facilitate broader use of this method.