Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The need to increase production rates and produce new polymeric materials with existing equipment as well as the ability to replace processes with cost-effective and environmentally-friendly versions are key drivers in the polymers industry. On the other hand, academic research is often focused on the synthesis of new polymers from bio-renewable feedstock, or the development of materials with controlled microstructures for high value product applications. The fundamental knowledge of polymerization kinetics and mechanisms required to guide polymer synthesis conditions for both process and product development efforts is often lacking in both academia and industry. My research fills this gap by applying specialized kinetic pulsed-laser techniques to measure key rate coefficients not accessible through standard experimentation, capturing that knowledge in detailed mechanistic models formulated to represent polymerizing systems, and undertaking targeted experimental studies at relevant conditions to test and validate the models. I will use my NSERC Discovery funding to apply my expertise to the development of promising new materials, reducing the development time for environmental and biomedical applications. Specific target materials are a new water-soluble copolymer produced from the biosourced monomer Tulipalin-A, and biodegradable nanoparticles synthesized from novel poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and poly(lactide) (PLA) based macromonomers that have application for targeted drug delivery. In both cases, improved knowledge of the kinetics is needed to better understand and control the radical copolymerization process used to synthesize these materials. The third project will develop continuous aqueous-phase controlled-radical polymerization processes to provide a more precise control of polymer chain microstructure, if needed for material application. As well as enabling the development of new materials with environmental and biomedical applications to complement my industrially-sponsored research on existing radical polymerization processes, the research will provide further insight into the role of hydrogen bonding on polymerization kinetics, a subject I am systematically investigating for non-biodegradable acrylic monomers. In addition, it will train new graduate students in expertise important to the Canadian polymers industries, and expose undergraduate students to practical material development and reaction engineering issues.