英国诺丁汉大学Steve Howdle教授做客第297期化苑讲坛

报告题目：Sustainable Chemistry: Polymers, Renewables and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

报 告 人 ：Prof. Steve Howdle

报告时间：2017年11月2日（周四）上午10:00

报告地点：化学楼二楼一号会议室

邀 请 人 ：谭必恩教授

报告人简介：

Steve Howdle’s research focuses on sustainable chemistry and in particular on the utilisation of supercritical carbon dioxide for polymer synthesis, polymer processing and preparation of novel polymeric materials. He has published over 330 peer reviewed papers in this field

He is Professor and Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham and prior to this held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (1991-1999).  He has received the Jerwood-Salters’ Environment Award for Green Chemistry (2001); RSC Corday – Morgan Medal and Award (2001);  Royal Society – Wolfson Research Merit Award (2003); RSC Interdisciplinary Award (2005); DECHEMA-Award of the Max Buchner Research Foundation (2006); RSC/SCI Macro Group UK Medal (2008); and the Hanson Medal of the IChemE (2009).

Steve is also the singer in a rock band (@ramshackle_men) and plays football in the East Midlands Veteran League (Beeston Old Boys FC).

报告内容：

Sustainable chemistry is of huge importance to our society and to the economic success of the chemistry businesses across the world.  The University of Nottingham is one of the leaders in sustainable chemistry and this talk will describe key aspects of the unique facilities that we have and the science that is being undertaken in our school.

Steve and his research group are excited about making new polymers from renewable resources and waste materials rather than from oil and to do this they use clean and green chemistry.

Steve and his team have utilized the ability of scCO₂ to plasticise both monomers and polymers to effect polycondensation and ring opening polymerisations at much lower temperatures than is possible under conventional operating conditions.  In some cases, these lower temperature operating conditions have opened up the opportunity to use enzymatic catalysts to yield valuable new polymeric materials. The group have also developed new approaches to creating polymers with a wide range of physical properties from waste natural materials such as terpenes.

In addition, the team has exploited the unique properties of scCO₂ to create novel polymeric materials using clean, solvent free and energy efficient approaches. The low viscosity and high diffusivity of scCO₂ allows dispersion polymerisation to form a range of vinyl block co polymers with excellent control and showing unique phase separation on the nanoscale which could be utilized for energy or power applications.