Research Overview
The group Biobased polymers explores both the synthesis of the building blocks through (bio)organic chemical methods, as well as their incorporation into polymer materials. New properties of new materials are being investigated for possible further development towards targeted applications.
Research
- Main research focus is on the design of polymer materials with tunable properties exploiting the functionality of biobased building blocks.
- This is enabled by the synthesis of new functional (co)polymers with a variety of architectures (homopolymers, block copolymers, graft copolymers, random copolymers) via different chemistries (organic chemistry, controlled or free radical polymerisation, ring-opening polymerisation, cationic polymerisation, step-growth polymerizsation, polymer modification, or a combination of them)
- and the study of their structure-property relationships in several fields of application e.g. stimuli-responsive polymers, coatings, fibres, engineering plastics, hydrogels.
- Growing focus on the use of artificial intelligence techniques to support the experimental work, e.g. data interpretation and prediction of structure-property relationships.
