top of page

Research Overiew

We are dedicated to mechanistic polymer design for various purposes, including smart polymers, sustainable polymer materials, (e.g., mechanically durable/resilient polymers, recyclable, and degradable polymers), battery materials, and polymers for smart devices.

  • Mechanistic Polymer Design

The mechanical properties of polymers are highly tied to their underlying molecular energy-dissipation mechanisms (MEDMs), but a direct understanding of detailed molecular behavior contribution to their performance is still missing due to a lack of precise control and tools to probe those mechanisms. We will unravel the mechanisms that govern the material properties by combining material design strategies and polymer mechanochemistry tools (e.g., shown in the video on the right). The program comprises individual efforts aimed at developing and and understanding new mechanochemical behavior,  polymer design, and bridging the gap of these two fields.

  • Sustainable Polymer Materials

While synthetic polymers have tremendously benefited our daily lives, their structural stability that makes them so useful leads to a major challenge: they are often difficult to break down. Depending on the constituent polymers, disposed plastics persist for 100–1000 years in landfills and oceans with far reaching environmental consequences. We aim to address the grand challenge though imparting (bio)degradability and recyclability/reprocessability by means of molecular engineering strategies. As show in the figure on the right, a typical example enabling thermosets to be recyclable is embedding dynamic covalent bonds.

  • Polymers for Batteries

Human activities heavily rely on the current limited fossil fuel resources, and it is predicted that these reserves will deplete by the end of century. Renewable energy sources (e.g., solar, wind, hydro, and nuclei energies) have, therefore, been pursued as ideal alternatives, and an essential device for the reversible energy store and release is battery. Our effort in this field are dedicated to designing high-performance polymer materials (e.g., polymer electrolytes and electrode coatings/binders) for more durable, high energy-density batteries. As part of our program, we are also integrating newly designed polymers for flexible/stretchable batteries that enables unprecedented human-machine interactions.

Battery.png
bottom of page