Events

Beyond balancing: overcoming tradeoffs through systems of dynamic bonds

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Lecture / Panel
 
Open to the Public
Neil Dolinski

Speaker:

Neil Dolinski

Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering

Columbia University

Abstract:

The continued (and rising) demand for low cost, ‘disposable’ plastics has led to a growing sustainability crisis. This issue is exacerbated for high-performance thermoset materials (tires, epoxies, elastomers) as the crosslinks responsible for their enhanced properties restrict flow, rendering these materials non-recyclable. To circumvent this, researchers have developed dynamic covalent chemistries (DCCs) that can be used as crosslinks, allowing for bond exchange, flow, and subsequent recycling of crosslinked networks. While DCCs represent an important milestone towards sustainable polymer networks, the rate of dynamic exchange must be carefully controlled to prevent undesirable creep during use, restricting their broad adoption. This presentation highlights several vignettes of works in the Dolinski group where ‘systems’ of bonds (dynamic or otherwise) can be leveraged to prepare materials with properties greater than the sum of their (molecular) parts.

Speaker Biography:

Dolinski received his BS, summa cum laude, in Materials Science & Engineering from Rutgers University in 2013 and a PhD in Materials from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2019. Before joining Columbia University in 2024, he was a PME Soft Matter Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago.