Polystyrene Upcycling: Turning styrofoam boxes into organic batteries

Pleased to see our latest Research Article on commodity polystyrene upcycling out in ChemSusChem! In this joint effort between my team and my long-time collaborators in Spain (the groups of Prof. David Mecerreyes and Prof. Haritz Sardon), we show that styrofoam food containers can be chemically upcycled into redox polymer electrode materials for metal-free organic batteries.

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.202500092

Polymer electrets for organic nonvolatile memory devices

Our joint review article with Prof. Cheng-Liang Liu (National Taiwan University) on polymer electrets is now out in Materials Today Chemistry. Polymer electrets are organic materials that are capable of trapping electronic charge; this property is key to their application in information storage. Find out how they work and learn about their chemistry! 

Share link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1k5BA8nHhtOvC1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtchem.2024.102380

Turning waste polystyrene into antimicrobial materials

Our research work on transforming used Styrofoam food boxes into antimicrobial polymers is now out in ACS Applied Polymer Materials:

 

 
A big shout-out to the project team: Algin and Michelle for their synthetic skills and perseverance, Wenguang's prowess with instruments and characterization, Li Ning's biomedical expertise and figure-making artistry, and He-Kuan's practical creativity.

Read our article here.

Our article on Antifouling Polymers is out in Nanoscale!

Antifouling polymers are hydrophilic materials that are indispensable for both drug delivery and surface modification applications. In nanomedicine, they help prolong drug circulation lifetime by conferring stealth against the immune system, while in surface science, they help prevent molecules and biological matter from sticking to surfaces. How are antifouling polymers able to do this? We discuss this and more in our Review article, now published in Nanoscale!

 

 Link to article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3NR03164K

Another fruitful collaboration with the Xia Group (ICCAS)

Our latest collaborative work on push-pull dyes with Prof. Andong Xia's Group (Chinese Academy of Sciences) has just been accepted in J. Phys. Chem. B

Read the article here.

Review on Pentafluorosulfanylated Materials

My invited review has been accepted in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C! This will be featured in the 2019 Emerging Investigators themed issue. [Link to article]

2019 Ontario Early Researcher Award (ERA)

Proud to be the recipient of Ontario's 2019 Early Researcher Award (ERA)!

This is a prestigious provincial award granted annually to early-career Principal Investigators (PIs) based on their independent research accomplishments.

We just made the Inside Front Cover of J. Mater. Chem. C !

 

Reference:  Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 2019, 7, 7865-7871  [Link to article]

102nd Canadian Chemistry Conference & Exhibition, Québec City

It was a nice week of chemistry at the CCCE 2019 in Québec City. Thankful to Thomas Baumgartner and Alex Adronov for inviting me as a guest speaker for the Innovative Concepts in Organic Materials Symposium. Some photos of the host city:

Pentafluorosulfanyl groups as electron acceptors in push-pull dyes

Prabhat's article on novel push-pull fluorophores has just been accepted in the Journal of Organic Chemistry. [Link to article]

Citation:  J. Org. Chem. 2017, 82, 11008-11020

Reversible thermochromism in metal-organic frameworks

Congratulations to Guoxian on publishing his research on bismuth-based metal-organic frameworks in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C.  [Link to article]

Citation:  J. Mater. Chem. C 2017, 5, 10005-10015

Reversibly thermochromic material from the Chan Lab

  

Material synthesized by Guoxian Zhang. Video credit: Janire Matas

Chan Research Group - Spring 2017 photos

Left to right:  Guoxian, Janire, Victoria, Prabhat, Craig, Julian

Favorite Past Projects - Top 3

The Top-Three:

1)  J-aggregated π-Conjugated Macrocycles. A series of organic macrocycles were synthesized and self-assembled into high PL quantum yield (92%) J-aggregates. These materials exhibited strong light-matter coupling and robust ambient stability. This work was conducted at MIT. (Chan et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 5659-5666)

Article link:  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja900382r

2)  Metal-Catalyzed Depolymerization of Lignin. We reported a non-oxidative vanadium-catalyzed depolymerization of natural lignin. This research was done at UC Berkeley. (Chan et al. ACS Catal. 2013, 3, 1369-1377)

Article link:  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cs400333q

3)  Degradable Zwitterionic Polymers. A series of biodegradable water-soluble polycarbonates bearing zwitterionic sidechains were designed and shown to possess multifunctional properties for nanomedicine applications. This work was conducted at IBM Almaden. (Chan et al. Chem. Sci. 2014, 5, 3294-3300)

Article link:  http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/SC/c4sc00789a

Polymeric Mixed-Micelles for Nanomedicine Applications

Some work I performed as a scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center: A degradable polymeric mixed-micelle system based on amphiphilic mPEG-b-polycarbonate diblock copolymers was developed. This mussel-inspired polymer design features catechol side chains to which the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) can be covalently conjugated as pH-sensitive p-quinoneimines via a mechanism that mimics the Raper–Mason pathway of mammalian melanogenesis.

  

Article link:  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.5b02784

Metal-Free MRI Contrast Agents - a Radical Solution!

My paper on organic radical-functionalized polymers has just been published in ACS Macro Letters. This was work that was done 2 years ago at IBM Almaden Research Center. The idea behind this research was to employ a metal-free spin-active system that is also biodegradable. Our work on these radical-functionalized diblock copolymers can be accessed here: ACS Macro Lett. 2017, 6, 176-180.

Accompanying patent application: Chan, et al. “Biodegradable Organic Radical-Functionalized Polycarbonates for Medical Applications”, U.S. Patent App. 14/609,778, 2015.

New faces for the new year

At the beginning of 2017, the Chan Research Group welcomed Dr. Prabhat Gautam (postdoctoral fellow) from India and Ms. Janire Matas (visiting researcher) from Spain. It has been two weeks now, and the both of them are adjusting very nicely. Prabhat is working on donor-acceptor π-conjugated systems, and Janire is researching redox-active polymers for battery applications. [Link]

Chan Research Group - 2016 in Review

2016 was an eventful year for the Chan Research Group. We had two graduate students and a visiting researcher join our team, major renovations done, instruments purchased, and our first paper published. Here's looking back at our first year of operation:

Feb 2016:   Dr. Chan was awarded an NSERC Discovery Grant.
Mar 2016:   Renovations to our D'Iorio 327 and 320 labs began.
Apr 2016:   Thomas Brossier, visiting MSc student from Paris, arrived in Ottawa.
Jun 2016:   Guoxian and Craig joined us as grad students.
Aug 2016:   Lab renovations complete. The Chan Group moved in.
Dec 2016:   Published our 1st paper on sulfonamide emitters in ACS Omega [link].

Sulfonamides in Organic Electronics - Blue-Emitting Helicene

Compared to red and green emitters, organic luminogens that emit standard- and deep-blue light remain challenging to design. Our recently published π-conjugated helicene is a deep-blue fluorophore in solution and the solid-state, with PL efficiency more than twice enhanced in the latter. This new sulfonamide / sultam-based motif introduces a brand new weapon to the arsenal of blue-emitting building blocks (e.g. triphenylethene, triarylamine-based systems). While common in pharmaceutical chemistry, sulfonamides are rare guests in organic electronics and thus represent a tantalizing possibility to explore.

                                                                            CIE (x = 0.155, y = 0.054)

Sulfonamides for Organic Electronics - Deep-Blue Emitter

My team recently reported a sulfonamide-based blue-emitting organic fluorophore that exhibits crystallization-induced emission enhancement.[1] Sulfonamides remain highly underutilized as functional groups in organic electronics and should be further explored as versatile molecular motifs for engineering structure-property-function relationships.

[1]  Sultam-Based Hetero[5]helicene: Synthesis, Structure, and Crystallization-Induced
      Emission Enhancement, ACS Omega 2016, 1, 1336-1342. [link]