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

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.