Grant: Discovery Development Grant

Despite the growth and application of sterilization procedures at hospitals and medical clinics, medical devices and implants are still the cause of millions of hospital-acquired bacterial infections each year. As such, the development of self-sterilizing materials has grown in recent years. The dangers associated with hospital-based bacterial infections are compounded by the increased occurrence of ""super bugs"", bacteria that have developed a resistance to many of our established antibacterial agents. In the past 25 years, oxazolidinones have emerged as one of the greatest and most promising new developments in the area of antibiotics. This proposal highlights a method to prepared a class of polyurethane materials that have the ability to degrade into oxazolidinone antibacterial molecules. The proposal focuses on the polymerization method and characterization of the resulting novel materials. In addition, the process also involves the incorporation of carbon dioxide as a molecular building block into the polymers framework. The ability to use waste carbon dioxide as a source of C in the preparation of materials is extremely exciting in the development of environmentally sustainable chemistry practices and has tremendous implications for our abilities to address global warming.